NEWS & ANALYSIS

CIPRO: Coca-Cola hijacked

New security measures bypassed as fraudsters target multinational

JOHANNESBURG - Coca Cola Africa Pty Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Coca Cola Company, is the latest in a long string of prominent companies to fall victim to company hijacking this year. Last month, all the legitimate directors - including Bill Egbe, Brett Naidoo and William Asiko - were ‘resigned' on the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (CIPRO) database. According to CIPRO records they were then replaced on November 11 by a single individual: one ‘Samuel Sadike'.

This hijacking appears to be linked to numerous others that were carried out by a syndicate - or syndicates - since at least January this year (see list of 35 below). The modus operandi of the fraudsters is to deregister the legitimate directors of a company and insert one of their own. The new director will then try to open a new bank account in the name of the company. In most of the previous cases there was then an attempt to divert tax refund money due to the legitimate company into the fraudulent account.

In early October the Democratic Alliance called for the "immediate establishment of a forensic investigation team - comprised of CIPRO, SARS, and the banks - to probe this scam and investigate ways to curtail this type of fraud."

In their response the Department of Trade and Industry accused the DA of an "opportunistic obsession with events of the past which CIPRO has been responding to for a while now, and is successfully transcending through series of interventions to strengthen administrative controls and close loopholes that are being identified."

More recently, after Politicsweb began publishing the names of victimised companies, CIPRO told Moneyweb that there had been no more reported cases of company hijacking since new controls were implemented in mid-October. However, in addition to Coca Cola Africa Politicsweb is aware of a number of other cases of company hijackings that post-date the new security measures.

Table: CIPRO hijacking victims list 2010 (Dec 16 2010)

1

Gap Distributors

2

AFC Ltd

3

Vanern Investments

4

Nestle Purina Petcare

5

A Million Up Investments 48

6

CHM Vuwani Computer Solutions (KZN)

7

Aobakwe Louw Properties

8

Taquanta Asset Managers

9

Vereeniging Foundaries

10

Pretoria Ooginstituut

11

Columbia Pharmaceuticals

12

Bombardier Transportation UK Limited

13

Isithemala

14

Natmed

15

South African Valve and Tube Industry

16

MJS Trading

17

OEP Office Equipment Products

18

ContinuitySA

19

Deloitte Consulting

20

D and T Trust

21

Trademore

22

Galderma South Africa Laboratories

23

Birchwood Management Company

24

Fujitsu Services

25

Astrapak Gauteng

26

Mtema Mashao Consulting and Civil Engineers

27

ITQ Business Solutions

28

Becker Automotive

29

Permoseal

30

 Vereeniging Abattoir

31

Africa Advent Financial Services

32

Vaal-Maseru Busdiens

33

Crocodile Valley Citrus Company

34

Technomine SA

35

Coca-Cola Africa

36

????

37

????

38

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