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AMABHUNGANE: How PIC’s R4.3bn Ayo investment is being spent on Independent Media’s bills, Survé’s properties and Friends of Iqbal By Dewald van Rensburg for amaBhungane
VoltAfrica was until very recently a Sekunjalo company. It was called Independent Digital Lab and owned by Sagarmatha Technologies, which belongs to Survé’s Sekunjalo.Then Independent Digital Lab/VoltAfrica was bought by, or transferred to, a company called Apollis Millennial Investments.
Whatever purchase price there was would have been for the benefit of Sagarmatha, which is to say Sekunjalo, which is in turn to say Survé.So Sagarmatha transferred a subsidiary to 4Plus and then Ayo paid 4Plus R75-million. VoltAfrica also got a direct loan of R11.5-million from Ayo, according to the company’s financial statements. One of VoltAfrica’s three active directors is Kubeshnee Subrayan, who was on the Ayo payroll in early 2019. Samantha Naidu, who lists herself on LinkedIn as the chief executive of VoltAfrica, was previously the head of direct advertising for Independent.Ayo does not give any hint in its financial statements and limited responses to questions that the investment in 4Plus required any related party disclosure.“There is no related party relationship as this is an independent consortium.” But 4Plus was originally known as Apollis Millennial investments because two of its founding directors were sisters Tricia and Heidee Apollis — and Heidee is given by the company’s share register as the original sole owner. Tricia Apollis is a former Independent journalist and was a personal assistant to Survé who has accompanied him around the world when he travelled to BRICS summits and the World Economic Forum. She is evidently very close to him. She gives her residential address as a unit in the extremely expensive Silo development in Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront. This is one of four units in that complex owned by Pro Direct Investments 112 – a private company with Survé and his two sisters as directors. The apartment was worth about R24.5-million when Survé bought it in 2018. So the company getting money from Ayo was co-founded by Survé’s personal assistant who is living in his apartment.originally approached the other Apollis, Heidee, to procure the 4Plus share register, after which she sent a WhatsApp message saying, “Please don’t phone or send me emails again!” Before breaking off communication, she did however provide her address – the same Silo apartment where her sister lives and which belongs to the Survé company.One mystery remains. If Ayo now owns 15% of 4Plus and its subsidiary Volt, who owns the rest? Ayo says it is not the Apollis sisters, but rather a consortium of formidable female businesswomen in the technology field, completely independent from Ayo. Plaatjes said that Zoliswa Kota-Fredericks, a former deputy minister of human settlements, is a “key shareholder” and chair of 4Plus. This shareholding is via a company called Womens Technology Investments, which the 4Plus share register bears out. This company again has Tricia Apollis as a director.to Ayo’s spokesperson, Kaz Henderson, which is strange if her consortium is independent of the company. Company records show that, on the same day she became a director of Womans Technology Investments, Kota-Fredericks also became sole director of five other companies linked to Survé. Up to Kota-Fredericks’ appearance as a director on 1 March 2019 all the companies had the same two directors.The other is Fredelaine Elna Cindy Brand, the company secretary of Survé’s Sagarmatha Technologies.And yet more related partying Another new investment by Ayo is in a company still going by its registration number, K2018010234, rather than a real name.Ayo spent R15-million to partner with the existing Sekunjalo online shopping company Loot.co.za to establish a supposedly new e-commerce business under K2018010234.The company’s sole director is Valentine Dzvova, the group financial manager at Independent. Another item in the Ayo reviewed results is a small related party note that the company has paid rent to two different entities.The other was Prodirect Investments 112, the Survé company that owns the luxury Silo apartments. The rent of R1.73-million would cover a large proportion of the payments on the bonds of R22.65 million registered over some of these units.’s questions about Ayo apparently paying off Survé’s personal debt, like most questions, went unanswered.If the PIC succeeds in its court bid to claw back the R4.3-billion invested in Ayo, it is not clear how much will be left to attach. After already having paid out dividends of R221-million, Ayo has announced a further R55-million will be paid out. AEEI, Ayo’s parent company, released its own financial statements on the same day as Ayo and it appears that the Ayo dividend is simply being passed on to AEEI shareholders, of which Survé’s Sekunjalo is the major one with a 60% stake in the company. AEEI, which owns 49% of Ayo, is getting a R22.5-million dividend from Ayo and has in turn declared a dividend of R29.5-million, 60% of which goes to the Survés. The centrepiece of Ayo’s finances, however, remains the R3.6-billion that was left of the R4.3-billion it was given by the PIC in August 2019. The company had profit after tax of R181.8-million, but got interest on its bank balance of R295-million.These cash distributions and Ayo acquisitions are continuing despite all the company’s cash being under threat of claw-back by the PIC and of its major customer, Sasol, which
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