KEY FIGURES: Advocate Bruce Dyke, left, and Theunis Crous at the Port Elizabeth Commercial Crimes Court yesterday. Picture: EUGENE COETZEE
Fraud trial told how companies were wary of doing business with developer
WEALTHY businessman Theunis Crous was notorious for not paying his bills, Port Elizabeth contractors told a court yesterday. So when it came to working with him on yet another project towards the end of 2010, they were sceptical.
One by one the Port Elizabeth businessmen told how they lost money, some of them millions, when a deal to build low-cost housing in the Uitenhage area went sour.
They eventually recovered some of the money after Crous’s company, the Ho Hup Corporation, was liquidated in January 2011.
Crous and his then chief financial officer, Almero Pienaar, pleaded not guilty in the Commercial Crimes Court yesterday to defrauding the taxman out of about R5.4million between December 2009 and January 2011.
They opted not to give plea explanations at this stage.
In applying for bail shortly after his arrest in November 2012, Crous, 57, of Johannesburg, the former “sugar daddy” of socialite Khanyi Mbau, told the same court he was broke.
Crous and Pienaar allegedly submitted false VAT refunds on behalf of Ho Hup, claiming a refund for input tax for services which had not actually been rendered.
Between November and December 2010, Pienaar approached several suppliers and asked them to provide pro forma invoices for the supply of goods.
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