Four properties at heart of disputeFormer ANC cabinet minister Penuell Maduna has mounted a legal ba le to force his tycoon ex-wife Nompumelelo Maduna to register four properties worth millions of rand in his name.
The latest legal battle comes after their out-of-court settlement in which she agreed to pay him a whopping R30-million following an acrimonious legal battle over the Sasol shares he clinched in a controversial BEE deal shortly after he left the cabinet in 2004.
In the court papers filed at the Joburg High Court last week, Maduna, who is a businessman and deputy chairman of law firm Bowman Gilfillan, said he agreed to be removed as beneficiary of his ex-wife’s trust, Nompumelelo Maduna Family Trust, as part of the settlement agreement.
Nompumelelo, Melissa Robinson and Harold de Kock are the trustees. He said after his removal, the properties – one each in the Joburg suburbs of Bryanston and Fourways, with the third in Centurion and the last one in the holiday paradise of Zimbali in KwaZulu-Natal – were supposed to have been registered in his name.
He said after accepting the agreement, he contemplated registering the properties in the name of his trust, Kwanokhala Family Trust and the initial transfer papers were drafted in the name of the trust.
Madunna said after careful consideration, he decided to register the properties in his name instead, adding that this rubbed the trustees the wrong way, who told him that if he did not put the properties in his trust, they would consider that as repudiation of the deal and proceed to sell them on the open market.
He said he informed the trustees that he would pay additional costs occasioned by the change in transfer.
“It was also made quite clear that … we had the right to change the name of the party into whom the properties were to be transferred and that any attempt to sell the properties on the open market would be treated as contempt of court and that we would seek to enforce the agreement of settlement,” read the documents.
He said on September 26 last year, he received an e-mail from the trio expressing their concern about the tax implications and said they would like to have an indemnity in terms of which the trustees are indemnified against potential loss of tax or tax consequences as a result of his decision.
The former Justice minister added that the trustees later sent an e-mail to his lawyers with indemnity clauses that he said were unacceptable.
Maduna said on November 1 last year, the trustees wrote to his lawyers and said they were concerned that there would be additional tax or transfer duty costs as a result of transferring the properties to him as opposed to a trust and suggested that a court order be obtained to force them to do so to resolve the impasse.
He said he wants the court to issue an order to authorise the sheriff to sign the necessary documents if the trustees failed to do so and to appoint his attorneys of record as conveyancers to attend to the registration of the properties into his name.
The matter will be heard on August 18.
