The Infernal Tower: The Damage To People, Careers And Reputations In Corporate South Africa (Bob ...

Bob Aldworth

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The Infernal Tower: The Damage to People, Careers and Reputations in Corporate South Africa is the first attempt at threading together one of South Africa s most sensational corporate sagas: the complicated sequence of events surrounding the formation of Africa s largest bank, Absa, and the Reserve Bank s controversial R1,5-billion donation or lifeboat to the group.

Aldworth paints a picture of a Broederbond- dominated bank that spent millions obsessively pursuing in the courts and with less orthodox methods such as extensive phone-tapping and energetic smear campaigns four men employed by or associated with the bank, including himself. All have been charged with fraud, but none has yet been convicted. The book says two Aldworth and Trustbank chief executive officer Hennie Diedericks seriously considered suicide.

The man within Absa who steeformer Absa chief executive Piet Badenhorst, sacked after Absa s shareholders became fed up with the welter of negative publicity surrounding the bank.

He had pursued personal vendettas and engaged in activities in the name of the bank that were inappropriate and without regard for who was hurt. Without question he besmirched Absa s name in the market place. How could depositors believe that a banking group that invaded the privacy of individuals and bugged their telephones, would deal with their financial affairs with a duty of care? Piet was not only cutting down people, he was destroying the market, writes Aldworth with the help of two co-writers, Jeremy Gordin and Benjamin Trisk.

Aldworth s attack against Absa s top men does not stop with Badenhorst s departure. He quotes a startling remark from Badenhorst s successor Dave Brink, the leading businessman brought in to put Absa right: Bob ever you guilty, he said of the fraud charges Aldworth has yet to face.

Aldworth describes how Brink assured him he would talk to Absa s board about the charges against him, but instead went to Absa s management committee and turned against him.

And the grey shoes and the grey socks watching, in their minds eyes, their safe jobs, big cars and pensions disappearing formed a solid grey wall and paraphrasing Macbeth, said: We have gone so far in blood; it makes as much sense to go forwards as backwards.

Aldworth suggests Brink, like other board members, was kept in the dark and fed manure .

Aldworth also points out that two senior Absa executives who have admitted to conspiring over Badenhorst s extensive phone-tapping Danie Cronje and Alwyn Noeth have stayed on at the bank.

The other main players who came up against Absa are Brh was swallowed up to make Absa.

Askin took over the Tollgate group in the run-up to the Reserve Bank s R1,5-billion gift. He claims Absa misled him about the state of the company, which it liquidated before obtaining access to the Reserve Bank s rescue money.

Askin, who Aldworth reveals as having hired a team of former British agents to help build a case against Absa, was charged with theft after he returned to Britain. He was arrested while on holiday in Italy and spent three months in an Italian jail an episode that was the subject of an official complaint from the British government.

Aldworth, throughout the book, alludes to Absa s efforts to sway the judicial system. In this instance he says: Who sent them? Who could possibly have persuaded the Italian police to behave like this? Aldworth points out there is no extradition treaty between Italy and South Africa.

Aldworth suggests Askin s experiences in to face Absa s charges in the South African judicial system. Instead, he wants to clear his name in the British High Court.

Absa this week published a press statement in anticipation of the book s release that said both Aldworth and Askin faced charges of fraud and had in the past made serious and totally false allegations . It says Askin was described in the Cape Supreme Court as having engaged in thievery and roguery on a grand scale .

Aldworth describes Justice Harold Berman s comments as prejudicial and irregular . He says that on one occasion the judge briefed a journalist in his chambers and on two occasions he confronted a member of Askin s legal team in a shopping centre with extraordinarily prejudicial information .

Aldworth writes that Berman, who has since died, was reprimanded by the Judge President for his behaviour in the failed sequestration hearing against Askin.sing a range of conventional and unconventional means to push up the price eventually paid for the Allied . Badenhorst described De Villiers as dead meat . De Villiers described Badenhorst as the Zsa Zsa Gabor of South African banking and an embittered Afrikaner with a CA .

Aldworth wraps up the book by detailing the extraordinary events surrounding the suspension of a commission of inquiry into the Tollgate liquidation this year. Absa demanded the commissioner, Bertrand Hoberman, recuse himself for being partial after Diedericks had given his version of how Absa used the lifeboat in cushioning the impact of the Tollgate liquidation .

He charts how Absa fortified its case for Hoberman s recusal by recording how in September 1994 Hoberman was found guilty by the Bar Council of breaching professional ethics. He was fined R1 000 for not disclosing to his attorne

 

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