Kebble, the gems and the general 
Sam Sole
07 October 2005 07:06
New details have emerged of an abortive Angolan diamond deal involving Brett Kebble and Dali Tambo that has left some of their Angolan partners high and dry — including a powerful former head of Angolan military intelligence. X(....... the killers ?????
The saga around the bid for a potentially lucrative alluvial mining licence provides an example of how Kebble accumulated powerful enemies. There is no evidence the deal is linked to Kebble’s murder last week.
According to Roxo Law, a law firm that represents various Angolan interests in South Africa, a consortium was set up in 2003 to exploit mining concessions held in Angola.
Roxo attorney Rui Roxo showed the Mail & Guardian minutes of a meeting at Johannesburg’s Westcliff hotel at which it was agreed that the Angolan ventures would be pursued via a company set up by Tambo, Koketso Holdings, in which four partners would have an equal shareholding of 25% each.
Other shareholders besides Tambo — son of the late African National Congress president Oliver Tambo — were a Roxo Law vehicle, Infinity Investments; Ben Faria, a Portuguese-South African businessman; and current Angolan ambassador to Namibia Manuel “Kito” Rodrigues.
Rodrigues, a former Angolan general and interior minister, was previously ambassador in South Africa. Once regarded as the second most powerful man after President José Eduardo dos Santos, he has been sidelined but is still influential and is understood to be regaining political clout in Luanda.
According to Roxo, Tambo brought his friend Kebble to the table in the form of mining house JCI, which was to be the financier for the project in return for a negotiated share once a mining licence was granted.
But, Roxo alleges the share certificates in Koketso Holdings were never issued by Tambo to the other partners, and a new company — Koketso Capital, backed by Kebble’s Consolidated Mining Management Services (CMMS) — was substituted in the diamond deal for Koketso Holdings.
Roxo said negotiations with Angolan diamond parastatal Endiama were still going on when, out of the blue, came an announcement in June last year by Randgold & Exploration, another Kebble vehicle, that Randgold had purchased a 24% stake in something called “the Koketso Angola Joint Venture”.
The formal announcement to shareholders stated that this constituted a 24% interest in the Luxinge alluvial diamond mining licence in the Lunda Norte province of Angola, the same concession brought to the table by Roxo and its partners.
As a consideration for this purchase, Randgold issued 1,3-million shares, worth R24-million, to the supposedly Tambo-controlled Koketso.
Roxo insists this windfall should have been shared with the other partners in holdings, but that none of them saw a cent :D. He said he was considering legal action, but was reluctant to move against Tambo, whom he said Kebble had “manipulated”.
Denying any wrongdoing, Tambo dismissed Roxo’s version, but he refused to discuss the deal and referred the M&G to his attorney, Mark Phillips. The M&G put the basic allegations to Phillips, who said he would consult his client, but failed to revert to the M&G.
Koketso financial director Kim Long claimed the Angolan state-owned Endiama, which sets conditions for the granting of mining licences in the country, had rejected the Koketso Holdings vehicle and withdrawn the concession.
Koketso Capital, she claimed, had renegotiated a 24% interest in the mine by joining JCI as financier. Roxo dismissed this as sophistry.
Ultimately, all the parties ended up as losers. Endiama in August withdrew the concession, citing “failure to perform”. Long confirmed this: “JCI never came up with the finance. The Angolan government took the mine back.”
The only winners, it seems, were the owners of the mysterious Koketso Angola Joint Venture, who received R24-million worth of Randgold shares.
JCI special projects manager Shaun Bryans said no payment had ever been made to Koketso Holdings. The Randgold shares were transferred to Koketso Angola Joint Venture, which he said was a South African- registered company, but, no record of such a company exists on the company register database.
Long denied that Tambo’s companies had any interest in the Joint Venture company: “Someone formed that vehicle. We had nothing to do with it. Someone used our name; I’m not sure it’s a legal entity, to be honest.”
She said Koketso was aware of the Randgold announcement and had taken the matter up with Kebble: “We were trying to sort that out just before Brett’s death.”
She declined to detail what the true situation was with regard to the supposed joint venture: “I can’t discuss that; it’s a very sensitive time now for JCI.”
Bryans told the M&G that the shares were indeed transferred to the joint venture, which could be a legal entity in South African law, but that he had no idea who the beneficial owners were: “Koketso itself never received any benefit; who did, I don’t know.”
He said the answer to this might be one of the mysteries Kebble had taken with him to the grave. If so, it appears likely the transfer of shares was one of a number of simulated transactions Kebble used to siphon money out of his companies into other vehicles.
Moneyweb reported this week that CMMS, reflected in company registration records as a “director” of Koketso Capital, operated as a giant “slush fund” for Kebble.
JCI appears to have pumped money into CMMS which, among other things, owned the historic Melrose House used by Kebble as a home in Johannesburg until fairly recently. The most recent published JCI accounts reflect a R543-million loan to CMMS, interest-free, unsecured and with no fixed terms of repayment. But Money web claims the amount of JCI cash “loans” poured into CMMS over the years is closer to R2-billion. 
The Angolan diamond ventures are also where some of the cash raised from the controversial sale of about R1-billion worth of Randgold Resources shares ended up, according to an interview with Kebble broadcast prior to his death.
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