Report 73 Business Practices Committee

The 15 Feb 99 documents were discussed with VdDussen at meetings attended by officials of the Committee and VdDussen at the offices of RealityNet (Pty) Ltd on 16 February 1999 and again on 22 February 1999. Geldenhuys, the manager of RealiteitsNet (Pty) Ltd, attended both meetings for short periods. It was difficult to obtain direct answers to questions put to VdDussen. He had the habit of digressing and he was told that this habit of his would be mentioned in the report on the investigation.

Vd Dussen again said at the meeting on 16 February 1999 that one should have a background about the history of Omnisure and RRB to fully understand the 15Feb99 documents. He said that his ongoing research, even before the days of Omnisure, showed that the liabilities:assets ratio of South African consumers was amongst the highest in the world. Because of various and complicated interrelated factors resulting from inter alia apartheid, sanctions, interest rates and the then existing legislation favouring financial institutions, South Africans found it increasingly difficult to service their liabilities.

He started to develop a model aimed at the "... re-engineering of the distribution channels of the products and services in the financial sector" and "... to manage people out of their debt". (17). The "KEER" model (see section 2) was part of a bigger model called "FLOS". "FLOS" was the acronym for "Financial Lifestyle Operating System''. "FLOS" was also a "mechanism to evaluate risk". He did not mention "FLOS" during any of the previous meetings.

The documents consisted of the first two pages and annexures C to X. The first page reflected a list of 53 names. (18) Against each name was recorded the capital invested (19) by the person, those persons that were fully refunded the monies paid by them, the date of the investors' initial involvement (20), the capital and interest already repaid and at which development phase (see below) the investors were involved. The first investor on the list was the father of VdDussen, who allegedly invested R1 006 865.52 on 31 July 1994. The 53 investors invested approximately R8.684 million during the period July 1984 to September 1998. It was established that the amounts invested at times included "services rendered". VdDussen was asked for a list of the actual amounts invested.

The "development phase" was shown as:

Omnisure (19 investors),

RRB (11 investors),

Consortium (10 Investors),

Omnisure/RRB (2 investors),

Omnisure/RRB/Consortium (1 investor),

RRB/Consortium (1 investor),

RealityNet (Pty) Ltd (3 investors),

Consortium/RealityNet (Pty) Ltd (4 investors) and

Metanoia (Pty) Ltd (2 investors).

The Omnisure/RRB/Consortium linked to the name of the one investor, meant that the investor invested monies with VdDussen on three occasions, namely when VdDussen was involved with Omnisure, RRB and a "consortium" respectively. VdDussen said that he managed two "consortiums", namely "Finansnet" and "Finweb". The purpose of these two consortiums was the "... development of the system and people".

VdDussen thus took investments from "acquaintances" since the days that he was involved with Omnisure to "develop" the "KEER" model. Part of this money was used to service and repay the loans of earlier investors. This pattern was continued when VdDussen was with RRB and also later during the consortiums "phase".

The second page of the document contained the names of investors who were invited to a meeting held on 23 January 1999 (see section 12). According to VdDussen annexure C contained the "Parting Documents". In a letter, apparently to a CT Neethling, VdDussen wrote:

"After the allocation Omnisure was placed in a position where 70 per cent of its overheads were covered by generated income. It is thus necessary to only generate 30 per cent of its overhead costs monthly with newly created funds. In the case of RRB 95 per cent of its overhead costs have to be generated with newly created funds ...".(21)

This is a clear indication that the investments by the clients of VdDussen were applied to finance the running costs of his businesses.

Annexures D to X were copies of various agreements with shareholders and/or lenders in Omnisure and RRB. An analysis of these agreements would seem to indicate that VdDussen started on 14 October 1994 (22) to give personal surety that the amounts invested would increase in value over a certain number of years.