Armitage vs Kellermann on Anchor offshore fund. Aberration or strategy?

By Alec Hogg

Nothing yet from the Belvedere duo of Cobus Kellermann and David Cosgrove in response to my second batch of questions. They did say today. And it’s some hours before sundown.

But helped by representation by heavyweight media lawyer Johan Theron of Werksmans, they’ve clearly got some believing their side of the story. A media outlet or two is now intimating the OffhoreAlert and Biznews reports are fabrications, figments of over stimulated imaginations. I’ve also been sent some interesting messages via Twitter. Among the kinder ones were “sensational-seeker” and “useless hack”.

No journalist with half a brain reaches their own conclusions after only hearing one side of the story. Life it too complex. I’m eagerly awaiting the Kellermann/Cosgrove response to my questions which their lawyer is confident will change my mind. But that job just got a whole lot tougher.

With a flood of allegations and documentary proof hitting my in-box, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to enlist any sympathy for anti-OffshoreAlert camp. The screenshot reproduced below from Kellermann/Cosgrove’s Trinity Scheme is a sample. I’ve added it to my list of questions for the duo. It should provide an interesting response. Because it’s obvious that either they or Anchor Capital’s Peter Armitage are selling pork pies.

The screenshot was taken this morning. It shows the four options the company advertises as “our funds” which are available to investors. Last of them is the Anchor Global Diversified Fund. The web page also used to include a downloadable application form allowing investors to sign up and invest. That link is now broken.

We passed this information on to Armitage who said his lawyers immediately contacted Kellermann/Cosgrove’s lawyer. The parties are engaging.

The important issue here is that on Monday Armitage told us: “I have no knowledge of Cobus’s offshore operations.”

If that is the case, why is an Anchor fund being offered by the Kellermann empire?  I asked Armitage to help me understand. We chatted at length. He was understandably emotional about this fresh disclosure coming hard on the heels of this morning’s cancellation of Anchor’s purchase of the Clarus/Contego business on the grounds of material non-disclosure. Kellermann was also shareholder there.

Rather than repeating his immediate reaction here, we agreed on a more considered written statement. I look forward to adding the response from Kellermann. Here is Armitage’s take:

From Peter Armitage CA (SA), CEO of Anchor Group:

Thank you for alerting us to the Trinity website and Anchor’s name on it. As previously indicated we have never been in business with Mr Kellerman other than as an asset manager to Clarus. We have no knowledge of his offshore business and its operations.

It is hence extremely disturbing that our name appears on the Trinity website, with a fund under our name. We have never heard of Trinity and were unaware of this fund. When we set up our offshore fund we got proposals from various parties. Mr Kellerman proposed a fund structure to us a year or two ago, which we never took forward, and we proceeded to set up our offshore fund with Sanlam Ireland, a reputable partner and domicile.

I can confirm that:

  • We were not aware of the fund on the Trinity website
  • We have never invested any client funds in this fund
  • We have played no role in the management of the fund
  • We have no knowledge whether this fund “exists” and has monies in it

This fund in question is either a dormant fund with no assets (which he rolled out as a template), which I am hoping is the case. If there are monies in the fund then we have been fraudulently represented as being the asset manager, which is certainly not the case.

Our lawyers are trying aggressively to get confirmation of whether there are any investors in this fund, but as yet we have not been able to make contact with anybody involved. We are also demanding that this fund gets removed from the website and full disclosure gets made to us to whether this fund was ever activated. We take this matter very seriously and will update you with our findings.

Anchor fund on Trinity plaform

 

* Click here to read the “back story” and access links to all the Biznews.com coverage of the Belvedere saga.

Visited 114 times, 1 visit(s) today