Synopsis
In September 2005, corporate South Africa was rocked by the violent murder of mining maverick Brett Kebble. In life, he was known as a billionaire patron of the arts, compassionate philanthropist, champion of black economic empowerment, urbane raconteur and generous host. But within six months of his death, Kebble was exposed as the architect of one of the biggest and most convoluted frauds seen by any stock exchange in the world, a flawed genius who lied and cheated and stole so cunningly that even astute auditors were fooled. By the time he died, Kebble was both broke and jobless. His legacy was a maze of convoluted transactions that would take forensic investigators months, perhaps years, to untangle. The trail would lead from one of the African continent’s oldest and most venerable mining houses to more than 100 shell companies; from the diamond fields of Angola to the new black elite in democratic South Africa’s upmarket suburbs. But in the wake of Kebble’s death, far darker secrets than his unorthodox and downright criminal transactions would also come to light. Many of them are revealed for the first time in this hard-hitting A-B-C of Brett Kebble’s brilliant but terminally crooked business career.
About the Author
Barry Sergeant was born in Lusaka. After graduating from the University of the Witwatersrand, he was admitted to the bar as an advocate, but almost immediately crossed into journalism. In the early 1990s he took a planned short sabbatical into investment banking. He stayed in that business longer than he intended, working on five continents, mainly in mining and resources, in the areas of investment analysis and corporate finance. This sojourn took him from the hallowed halls of London money managers to the Australian outback, and from the electrifying world of Wall Street to the very furthest and deepest reaches of the Amazon. Sergeant became a recognised specialist in West African resources, partially triggering his first encounter with Brett Kebble, in 1996. When the biggest bubble in stock market history burst on Wall Street in March 2000, Sergeant returned to journalism. Sergeant was awarded his first major national South African journalism prize in 1988. During his time in investment banking, he was a rated investment analyst in both Johannesburg and London. His journalism has more recently been recognised on a number of occasions, not least as the unanimous-choice winner of The Valley Trust Award for Courageous Journalism, in 2004. In February 2006, he was named a Paul Harris Fellow by Rotary International for tangible and significant assistance given for the furtherance of better understanding and friendly relations among peoples of the world.
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