ALEC HOGG: Willie Hofmeyr, head of the asset forfeiture unit at the NPA, joins us now - part of a task team that has been put together by government. Willie, this is unusual - to see certain public sector authorities getting involved together to investigate scams when I guess there's been a lot of money involved. How long might it take, from your side, to get to grips with the money flow in the whole Tannenbaum story?

WILLIE HOFMEYR: Good evening, and yes, it is unusual for us to get together with this kind of speed and urgency, but we do work together very often on these big commercial cases. But I think the very scale of the scheme that has been in the news here, and the amount of evidence that would have to be dealt with - as well as the fact that it may well involve contraventions of forex regulations, of banking law, of criminal law, as well as the liquidation application that has been brought - makes this quite a complicated issue to deal with. So we have decided to pool our resources and really try and deal with this issue as fast as we can. It's very difficult at this stage to say just how long that will take.

ALEC HOGG: Do you have any idea yet how much is involved?

WILLIE HOFMEYR: I think at the moment I don't really want to speculate. The figures we are looking at are probably not that different from what has been in the public domain, but obviously with a scheme like this it is likely that money has been reinvested and the same money circulated several times. So I think the real amount is probably in the billions, but significantly less than the sort of upper limits of R10m or R14m that have been speculated.

ALEC HOGG: Presumably those people who put money into the scheme would have had to declare them for income tax returns, would have had to declare them for exchange control approval. And if they haven't done so, then thy might be in for an even bigger high jump.

WILLIE HOFMEYR: Indeed, and I think that's why we have decided to bring together all the relevant institutions in government that may have been affected by what's going on here, and not to duplicate investigation work, but to pool the resources that we have.

ALEC HOGG: How quickly might you be able to act here?

WILLIE HOFMEYR: I think it really depends on what evidence there is available. We do know that there have been private investigators dealing with this for some time, and I think what we will try to seek to do is find out what they have, whether we can get access to the information that they have. But from a government point of view it's really been for the past week or so that there's been a concerted effort to get on top of the huge amount of evidence that there may be in this case.

ALEC HOGG: Willie, it appears to be even bigger than Fidentia. Have you come across anything like this in your career?

WILLIE HOFMEYR: Certainly not on this kind of scale, you know. I think we've had to deal with quite a few pyramid schemes, and you may remember the - what was it called, the Millennium 1000 something,  where there have been huge amounts of money. But it's been millions, rather than billions. I think for all of us this is really new territory.

ALEC HOGG: Now, Barry Tannenbaum, the man behind the scheme is in Australia. Mrs J Arthur Brown, related to Fidentia, is in Australia. Also in Australia is Barry Duke, Ed Duchan[?], John Stratton, Steve Goodwin - who actually left Australia and was nabbed. But we can't get these guys out of Australia because of an extradition issue. It seems like it's a haven for South African crooks. What is the reason for it? Why do the Australians not allow these crooks to be extradited back to this country?

WILLIE HOFMEYR: I think at the moment there's a perception and a reality that it's in general quite difficult to extradite. It's a cumbersome process, and if people have lots of money they can tie us and the foreign authorities up in endless litigation. I think one of the reasons why Australia has become a bit of a destination of choice for well-off crooks is that there was a judgment a few years ago, an extradition judgment that was essentially based on an argument that the conditions in our jails are so bad that people should not be extradited because they may fear for their lives if they are locked up in jail here. We clearly think that's a wrong judgment, and even in that case I think the authorities presented good evidence and made undertakings that people can be kept in a jail where they would be safe and secure. But that judgment is still an obstacle and it would have to be overturned, probably on appeal, before we will have another extradition that's successful.

ALEC HOGG: Extraordinary. Willie Hofmeyr is the head of the asset forfeiture unit of the NPA.

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