BPR wants company liquidated as rescue is bound to fail
Makaziwe Mandela’s company Danmar Autobody owes the taxman a whopping R12-million in unpaid taxes.
The company, which repairs and panelbeats damaged Mercedez-Benz vehicles, could also face criminal prosecution as it has not paid the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), pay as you earn (PAYE), value-added tax (VAT), provident fund, and skills development levy (SDL) deductions it docked from its employees.
Danmar Autobody, which was bought from Imperial for R20-million in 2016, is owned by Mandela and her business partners, Lister Bloomberg and Colin Yach.
The shocking tidbits are contained in an urgent court application at the Joburg High Court by two business rescue practitioners (BPRs) Harold Cesman and Kobus Kotzee, and Danmar Autobody’s subsidiary company Panel Shelf 770 in a bid to obtain an order to liquidate the company.
In his affidavit, seen by Sunday World, Cesman said they were appointed as business rescue lawyers by Bloomberg, Yach and Mandela, who is the daughter of the late president Nelson Mandela.
He now wants the court to terminate the business rescue proceedings and liquidate the company, saying it has no prospect of being rescued from bankruptcy and all its panelbeating shops had closed down.
Cesman said Bloomberg, who is the CEO of the company, appeared to have used at least R18.5-million to fund his lifestyle and to capitalise his company Closeprops 2001 CC. “These drawings came in the form of ATM cash withdrawals for thousands of rand at a time, utilising the company credit card for his own personal [use],” he said.
Cesman also said the company had stopped contributing to the employee provident fund administered by Mibco and had stopped paying its Mibco subscription fee. This, he said, resulted in the company owing Mibco over R8-million.
“Although the BRPs have not been able to categorically confirm this, it would appear that the company was deducting amounts from employees’ salaries but failing to pay over these amounts to the provident fund. I’m advised that this constitutes a criminal offence,” reads the affidavit.
The company is also indebted to SA Revenue Service (SARS). “It had ceased paying VAT, PAYE, UIF and SDL to SARS and had an indebtedness of approximately R10-million to SARS at this stage.
By February 2020, this indebtedness had escalated to R12-million inclusive of penalties and interest. Once again, the company had been deducting PAYE, UIF and SDL from its employees paychecks but simply failing to pay it over to SARS,” reads the affidavit.
Cesman said the company should be liquidated because it had a total of R130-million liabilities and assets of about R60-million, noting its sister company, Panelshelf 770, which owns the Ophirton and West Rand branches, owed Danmar Autobody R6-million and couldn’t also repay the loan because it was broke.
Mandela declined to comment.
