The Please Call Me millions: But wait, there’s more

By Nicola Mawson, Contributing journalist

Johannesburg, 15 Sept 2026

Either Errol Elsdon was involved in Fidentia litigation, or not. (Image created by GenAI)

It was 2013, and Black Rock Mining representative Errol Elsdon was prepared to offer an unknown interest in an altogether different legal battle – on the assumption that he won – to secure £250 000 in financing for Nkosana Makate to fight Vodacom in the Please Call Me battle.

Court papers show that Elsdon sent an e-mail on 12 July 2013 to Walton Eddlestone, offering “as security our interest in the LHUT [Living Hands Umbrella Trust] case” as a litigation funder. At the same time, he promised to “pay back the £250 000 within 90 days” should the Vodacom case be lost.

While Elsdon successfully secured that investment – worth R3.75 million at the time – for what would become an 18-year court fight against South Africa’s largest mobile operator, his proposed security would have been worthless. And Wilna Lubbe, an LHUT trustee and Makate’s lawyer, says Elsdon was never involved to start with.

In 2010, LHUT put in motion a claim for damages against Old Mutual Unit Trust Managers. Court papers show it sought R1.124 billion, plus interest, because, in LHUT’s opinion, Old Mutual was negligent when it transferred an investment portfolio it was managing for the trust to another fund manager.

This money − death benefits paid by the Mineworkers Provident Fund for the dependants of deceased mineworkers who belonged to the National Union of Mineworkers − was swindled by Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown after his company took control of the investment in 2004, in what was one of the biggest corporate scandals at the time.

Under appeal

Yet, that ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court of Appeal in 2024 because Old Mutual had no legal duty to prevent the loss, had not acted negligently, and no factual or legal link could be established between it transferring the money to Matco Trust’s Standard Bank account for investment by Fidentia Asset Management and it ultimately being plundered by Brown.

The Old Mutual lawsuit was one of the matters GDAF funded on behalf of Elsdon and deceased and debarred advocate Chris Schoeman.

Elsdon told Business Report 13 years ago that his company – which he said was Sterling Rand at the time – only invested in cases it believed had a better than 70% prospect of succeeding.

“We do a desktop study. Our in-house lawyers have a look at it, the documentation is discussed in a committee and if we think there’s merit to it, we give it to our panel of attorneys and advocates, who we retain, for a full due diligence. If they come back and say that our chances of success are 70%-plus, we’ll take the matter on.”

Da Familia

In 2004, the Supreme Court of Appeal decided that litigation funding was lawful under South African common law in PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc and Others v National Potato Co-operative Ltd.

The publication reported: “Stirling [Sterling] Rand is one of the few firms that is actively involved in litigation financing in South Africa… Stirling [Sterling] Rand is a partnership between Elsdon, Tracey Roscher and Schoeman.”

The purported ties between two different sets of legal matters. (Image created by GenAI)

At the start of the month, ITWeb reported that Elsdon represented two different companies in the form of Sterling Rand and Raining Men, was absent from the public story for almost a decade and then reemerged as Black Rock Mining’s representative towards the end of last year, when he started claiming 40% of Makate’s settlement on the basis of having funded his fight.

(Next week, in the grand finale to this saga, ITWeb unpacks who claimed what about Makate’s funding, in a bid to determine exactly what went down.)

Business Report also reported that Sterling Rand “operates through a network” of international funds in Singapore, London, Geneva and Dubai, operating as the Commercial Intelligence Funds Group. Established in 1987, the group focused largely on investments in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

This “network” is actually GDAF, a company that is linked to Global Distressed Alpha Capital (GDAC) and Global Distressed Alpha Fund Management (GDAFM) with all three being Bermuda entities.

Distressed in Switzerland

These Distressed entities are housed under Switzerland-based Commercial Intelligence Funds Group (CIFG,) a firm that offers litigation funding, distressed debt solutions, settlement negotiation and arbitration enforcement services.

CIFG focuses principally on litigation finance and distressed debt recovery in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. (The ins and outs of the GDAF funding and various legal battles are unpacked in The Bermuda Triangle.)

In 2013, Business Day quoted Schoeman as saying one of the cases that Sterling Rand was funding was the R2.4 billion lawsuit against Old Mutual in the LHUT matter – a number at odds with court papers. Two years later, a status report on the LHUT website stated the Old Mutual litigation was still pending and that “Global Fund is still funding the litigation”.

Living Hands Umbrella Trust’s fight with Old Mutual was funded by a Bermuda company. (Graphic: Nicola Mawson)

This status report was issued by Lubbe, along with advocate Xola Stemela and Fred Eksteen. Lubbe tells ITWeb that GDAF funded the litigation under an agreement concluded between GDAF III and the curators acting on behalf of the Fidentia Group companies and LHUT. “The terms were subject to a confidentiality clause.”

In addition, says Lubbe: “LHUT had no agreement with Elsdon, Schoeman, Black Rock or [Kevin Brian] Jenkins.”

Last week, ITWeb revealed that Jenkins, one of Makate’s early funders, held various directorships alongside Lubbe and was a director of Squirrel Benefit Administrators until 2024, which was appointed in 2013 to administer LHUT beneficiary payments.

“I do not know what Elsdon’s alleged interest was, but the Living Hands Trust had no agreement with Elsdon,” says Lubbe. According to her, curators Dines Gihwala and George Papadakis, appointed as curators in February 2007, introduced GDAF to the trustees around February 2011.

‘Delinquent’ leadership

Gihwala resigned as a curator in the middle of 2014, according to a statement from the Financial Sector Conduct Authority – then the Financial Services Board (FSB). The FSB said: “On the same day that Gihwala tendered his resignation as a curator of Fidentia, the FSB became aware of a decision handed down by the High Court which contained adverse findings against Gihwala.”

A 26 June 2014 Western Cape High Court judgement declared Gihwala a delinquent director after finding that he had repeatedly used company funds and opportunities for his own benefit, at the expense of another investor. Gihwala was unsuccessful in overturning this ruling in the Supreme Court of Appeal two years later and, in 2019, was struck off the attorney’s roll.

How the Old Mutual matter fits into the Please Call Me timeline. (Image created by GenAI)

However, a March 2019 Public Protector report records then-FSB executive officer Dube Tshidi saying, “nothing has been found to have been committed irregularly by Gihwala while serving as co-curator of the Fidentia companies,” adding that Gihwala had a good reputation and was regarded as fit and proper when appointed in 2007.

Papadakis later testified in the LHUT litigation that Fidentia Asset Management was effectively being run as a Ponzi scheme. LHUT is now in the process of being terminated, with Lubbe noting it “paid millions of rands to traced and verified beneficiaries in terms of a formula endorsed by the court”.

* Elsdon was unsuccessfully approached for comment via his lawyers, while ITWeb was unable to track down Gihwala.