A money lender is fighting tooth and nail to wrest some of the properties the state seized from Jerome “Donkie” Booysen, to whom he claims to have lent R13.5m.
Matthew Jack is embroiled in a protracted legal battle with the prosecution over Booysen’s three properties in Bellville, Eerste River and Wellington in the Western Cape. The bruising legal fight is now headed for the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).
In a failed lawsuit, Jack, 49, told the high court in Cape Town he loaned alleged underworld kingpin Booysen and his business partner, Denver Langenhoven, R13.5m to procure a “large quantity of KN95 protective masks” from China in August 2020. He paid the money to Langenhoven's company, Dexavision.
He said Booysen offered to register bonds on the three properties and offer them as security.
The properties are part of the alleged Sexy Boys gang boss’s property portfolio, worth an estimated R21.35m, which the state seized in 2021, along with nine cars worth R1.7m.
The high court heard that Booysen operated drug factories at three of his 18 properties. When he tried to stop the national director of public prosecutions from confirming a provisional restraint order preventing him from selling the properties, Booysen denied knowledge of the drug factories and blamed his rental agent.
But the court found the prosecution had grounds to convict Booysen under the Prevention of Organised Crime Act and granted a restraining order.
In an affidavit, Jack said the acquisition and subsequent sale of the protective masks “unravelled, unfortunately”.
He said he learnt about the restraining order on Booysen’s properties when he tried to recover his money in February last year. He complained that the lawyers he hired had failed to register mortgage bonds before the restraint order was granted.
“I am an innocent third party, totally divorced from the alleged conduct that underpins the restraint matter. To the extent that the restraining order precludes me from registering mortgage bonds over the properties, it subjects me to undue hardship. It exposes me to risk for which I did not bargain when concluding the loan agreement with Dexavision,” Jack said in his affidavit.
Jack outlined his background and how he met Booysen. He said his impression of Booysen was of a totally different person from the one portrayed by the media.
Jack’s affidavit, sketching his background, revealed he attended St Peters Preparatory School in Rivonia, Johannesburg, and Michaelhouse in Balgowan, KwaZulu-Natal. He said he graduated with an honours degree in business science from the University of Cape Town and qualified as a chartered financial analyst from the Association of Investment Management Research in Chicago, US, in 2000.
Jack said he was introduced to Booysen by a rugby player he described as “an extremely polite and modest gentleman”, who played for a team funded by Booysens. He donated R100,000 to the club and R20,000 towards a feeding scheme that Booysen ran in the “early months of the Covid-19 pandemic”.
“Through these endeavours I became impressed with Mr Booysen’s support for the community and we became friendly,” the affidavit reads.
“At that stage, I had heard of Mr Booysen’s reputation as reported in the press. I felt that Mr Booysen was largely misunderstood and unfairly presented in much of the reporting. The man portrayed in the press was not the Mr Booysen I have come to know.”
But Gcobani Bam, head of the Asset Forfeiture Unit in the Western Cape, was not impressed. In his affidavit, Bam said the lawyers had failed to register the mortgage bonds because Jack had failed to provide them with Financial Intelligence Centre Act (Fica) documentation and the original title deeds for the properties.
“It is apparent that there is neither a factual nor a legal basis upon which [Jack] contends surety bonds are now sought to be registered over the properties which are subject to the restraint order,” the affidavit reads.
Bam asked the court to dismiss the application because Jack had contravened the National Credit Act and failed to prove that Dexavision was Fica-compliant.
Judge Hayley Slingers dismissed the application in June. Jack brought an application for leave to appeal which also failed last month. This week, his lawyer Dale Smiedt said: “We will be approaching the SCA.”
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