Kebble puzzle deepens

2005-09-29 07:02

Maarten Mittner, Borrie la Grange and Adriaan Basson

Johannesburg - Was mining magnate Brett Kebble the victim of a classic diamond murder?

This question was being asked amid growing speculation that missing shares in Kebble's Randgold Resources were related to his diamond interests in Angola and Lesotho.

It also was said his death had the typical characteristics of a diamond murder.

There also were strong similarities between Kebble's killing and the murder of Hazel Crane two years ago.

The socialite had been on the verge of testifying about illegal diamond trading in a court case when she was shot dead in her car.

Kebble, 41, was shot shortly after 21:00 near Melrose, Johannesburg, while on his way to a dinner appointment. He was hit at least five times in the chest.

Police were investigating a foiled hijacking, but were not excluding the possibility of an assassination.

Kebble excited and optimistic

Kebble resigned from all managerial positions in JCI, Western Areas and Randgold & Explorations last month.

He planned to get more involved in the diamond industry than he had been previously and on a larger scale.

Spokesperson David Barritt confirmed that Kebble was excited and optimistic about a diamond-concession transaction he had clinched in Angola.

"He regarded it as a big challenge to bring about change in that country by means of economic development. However, he gradually admitted his concerns about corruption in the systems," said Barritt.

Trade on the JSE in Randgold & Exploration and JCI, two companies in the Kebble stable, was suspended on August 1.

Two related companies, Matodzi and Simmer & Jack, were warned, but not delisted, after they eventually published their financial reports on time.

Russel Loubser, executive chief of the JSE, said on Wednesday the exchange had been questioning the management of JCI and Randgold & Exploration about several financial issues for a period of time.

"But we never got any answers," he said.

A JSE spokesperson confirmed that a separate investigation into missing shares of Randgold & Exploration and its foreign arm, Randgold Resources, was continuing.

Randgold & Exploration said it was holding 18.4 million shares of R1.4bn ($220m) in Randgold Resources, of which only four million could be traced.

Kebble admitted in a radio interview that at least 9.9 million of the 14.4 million missing shares were loaned to an empowerment consortium to enable it to buy a big share of the "undervalued" Western Areas, another Kebble company, from Anglo American.

That transaction would have enabled Randgold & Exploration to obtain a large share in Western Areas.

According to Kebble, the rest of about 4.5 million shares were used to finance Angolan diamond interests.

Kebble's present and known diamond interests were in the Letseng diamond mine in Lesotho, where huge diamonds of 100 carats or more had been found recently.

Exclusive diamond rights

Letseng is jointly owned by JCI, Matodzi and the Lesotho government. Several loans for JCI were also made against the Letseng assets.

The Angolan diamond industry was also popular at present, with various foreign players trying to get prospecting rights.

Even De Beers was shut out of the market at one stage because the Angolan government had given exclusive rights to Israeli-Russian diamond magnate Lev Leviev.

Informed circles were speculating that Kebble himself had sold or lent the missing shares in Randgold Resources without the permission of the board to unknown institutions at the end of 2004.

Barritt said Kebble was "too clever to not have been able to replace the value of the missing shares".

- Beeld