Crook or Crucified?

Billy Rautenbach has been labelled a 'murderer' - his name was on the list of the top 20 criminals in South Africa. He's rumoured to have been involved in drug dealing, gun-running, smuggling, bribery, corruption and bankrolling Robert Mugabe's troops in the Congo war. Assets of his worth R60-million - including a Falcon jet - have been seized by the Assets Forfeiture Unit.

Before he was 40, his business interests stretched across more than a dozen African countries, earning him the nickname 'Napoleon of Africa'. But all that has changed, and Billy Rautenbach is now a fugitive from the South African justice system, accused of customs fraud and company theft.

Billy says he is innocent: 'They talk about murder. They talk about fake invoices. They talk about drugs. That's a whole lot of hogwash.'

In South Africa he made his name with Hyundai, but he was better known north of the border for Wheels of Africa - the largest trucking firm on the continent. He entered the family business as a mechanic, and his love of cars consumed him both at work and play, driving in rallies across Africa. He once controlled heavy-vehicles franchises, car manufacturing, trucking, farming and cobalt mining.

Now his empire lies in ruins: 'You never, ever think that anything like this can happen to you. You go along, you build a business, you try and do your own thing, try and do it as successfully as you can ... and everything is destroyed in a month or two.' After a year of attacks and allegations, Billy now lives outside Harare with his family, where he retreated from the fray, battered and bruised.

In the early 1990s, Billy was the outsider, the new kid on the block taking on the big boys of the South African motor industry with his then little-known South Korean brand Hyundai.

'At first they laughed and they scoffed at us ... the names they called it were unbelievable. And the publicity and the press - it was unbelievable to try and penetrate the motoring press ... Eventually the thing just grew and grew because of the service and the competitive price,' he says.

Hyundai imported and sold cars at a lower price by taking advantage of vague wording in the South African import legislation. Other car manufacturers used the same legal loophole, but on a smaller scale.

In October 1993, Billy set up a factory in Botswana to assemble Hyundais and sell them in South Africa. To protect the local car industry, and to level the playing fields, the import legislation was changed in 1995. Hyundai was given four years to phase out their assembly operation and build a manufacturing plant in Botswana. Their market share kept increasing. In 1997, local car manufactures called on the government for more urgent action.

Customs and excise pounced: 'At one stage they seized 20 000 cars of mine. They went to my dealerships throughout the country in one day, and put customs tape around the doors, and said the cars weren't to be sold ... eventually, after I don't know how many months, we managed to resolve that. They cleared us ... but they did an enormous amount of damage to the reputation of Hyundai.'

For most people, taking on the motor industry would have been enough. But at the same time that the Hyundai business was rapidly expanding, Billy was developing mining interests in the Congo, despite having no experience.

Soon after Laurent Kabila came to power in 1997, Billy visited the DRC as part of a Zimbabwean trade delegation. This was the beginning of his cobalt-mining company, Ridgepointe.

'We'd been transporting in the Congo for 20-odd years, so we knew a little bit about the country. We realised that the mining was very, very simple and logical. Not ever being in the industry, we looked at it a little bit differently. It turned out that, in a very short period of time, we out-mined the main state company,' explains Billy.

As an outsider to the mining fraternity, he looked at the problem of extracting cobalt with a fresh eye, and developed a different technique: 'We did it very selectively. We slowed down the process and picked it out in very high grade and with very little investment.'

According to a banking source involved in the Congo, who must remain anonymous, Billy's unorthodox approach was highly successful, and showed up the massive inefficiency of the state-run enterprises. In 1998, Laurent Kabila offered Billy a chance to head up Gecamines, the main state company. Billy says that he refused the offer two or three times, but eventually - and reluctantly - agreed to try and turn around the company.

But back in South Africa, things had started going wrong for Hyundai. Billy describes the factors that led to the crisis.

'We were exposed to foreign currency - everything we bought from Korea was in US dollars. We had to establish a brand-new factory, which was 250-million rand or pula. Interest rates went from 16 to 18 percent to 26 percent,' says Billy.

In May 1999, Hyundai negotiated an agreement with a consortium of banks to delay interest payments for six months, while the company got back on its feet. In November, when the six months were up, Hyundai was involved in more negotiations with the banks.

But those negotiations were never finalised. On the 19th November 1999, the Office of Serious Economic Offences raided the premises of Hyundai in Johannesburg, along with Billy's Sandton home. On the grounds that he was suspected of various crimes - ranging from theft to corruption - they carted away three truckloads of documents.

In the weeks following the raid, Billy's name made headlines, each one more damming and sensational than the last. It was an enormous blow: 'At the same time that we were negotiating, what happens? The banks say, 'We're out of here'. Then we went to court ... and they were told to give the papers back. But then they came to court and said that I was a murderer as well.'

In arguing their legal right to raid Billy's premises, a new allegation was made by the public prosecutor: involvement in the murder of Yong Koo Kwon, general manager of Daewoo. The press went into a feeding frenzy.

In an affidavit signed by Stephanus van der Watt, the investigation officer in charge of the Kwon murder, he stated that at no time was Billy a suspect in the investigation. But with such widespread negative press, the damage was done.

For Billy, it couldn't been timed worse: 'If you think of the timing - how the authorities timed it - it's unbelievable.' On 12th January 2000, Hyundai was declared insolvent.

A warning that someone was trying to frame him encouraged him to flee to Zimbabwe. When asked why someone would want to frame him, Billy claims that the key lies in his interests in the DRC.

'We were very active there in getting the production going, in turning around things. We were possibly affecting people's commercial interests ... I set up a little mine there, and out-produced the major cobalt producers in the world in one year. They spend billions of dollars putting up a plant and I come there as a farmer - me and my dad - and we get the stuff out of the ground.'

The Assets Forfeiture Unit maintains that there's no conspiracy or link between Billy's treatment in South Africa and his activities in the Congo. However, stories continued circulating: allegations that he was Mugabe's right-hand man, that he'd bribed Kabila to secure his mining concessions, and that his mines were financing Zimbabwe's soldiers in the DRC.

Billy denies these charges: 'I started mining in the Congo about a year before the war started. So all of a sudden, the war is there because of me. It's unbelievable.'

He also denies that he paid any bribes: 'The perception is ... that you just go around bribing people and you get whatever you want. It's not like that.'

Sources involved in the Congo confirmed that Billy's mining activities did upset the status quo in the country, and that this contributed to his crucifixion in the press.

In March 2000, under a cloud of suspicion, his mining concessions in the Congo were withdrawn: 'How can a guy accused of murder, drugs and gun-running be in charge of a major mining house?'

But the authorities weren't done. In September last year, the Assets Forfeiture Unit seized assets totalling R60-million, including a house, a farm, a Bell helicopter and a Falcon jet.

After all the accusations, the charges that remain against Billy are for R60-million, customs fraud and over R10-million company theft.

Billy says that he wants to come back to South Africa - on certain conditions - because he wants to claim R500-million in damages against the authorities. Willie Hofmeyer says Billy did approach the South African authorities about returning to South Africa - on the condition that the Assets Forfeiture Unit not oppose him receiving bail - a suggestion the national director of prosecutions decided not to accept.

Under current legislation, even before an individual is proven guilty, the state can seize property on suspicion of criminal activity. The seized property is held in safekeeping, and only with a conviction can assets be confiscated. However, if classified a fugitive - as Billy is - then the law is different, as Willie explains: 'We can apply for a confiscation order, even though he has not been convicted of a crime.'

Billy's lawyers are contesting the confiscation, and are heading for the court this month. But Billy claims that he is still caught in a catch-22 situation. He can't return to South Africa without the risk of going straight to jail and having to prove his innocence from behind bars, in a case that could last up to five years. Yet if he doesn't return to the country within three years, he loses the right to sue the state for defamation and claimed losses of R500-million. Billy believes that it is the South African government's intention to keep him out of the country so that he can't claim.

Despite all the allegations against him, Billy believes that he has had a raw deal: 'As one of the officials told me: 'At the wrong time, at the wrong place.''

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