For two years, the Dimension Data executives known as the Campus Six insisted they had done nothing wrong. Now one of them has signed a statement saying otherwise. Former Didata and NTT chief executive Jason Goodall admitted to being secretly on the buying side of the R1.4bn sale of The Campus in Bryanston while advising NTT on the selling side, named four former colleagues, and agreed to pay NTT about R208m. Those he named deny wrongdoing and are awaiting an appeal ruling. David Shapiro, who went to school with the Ord brothers and has watched Didata since its 1980s heyday, told Alec Hogg why he believed someone in the group was always going to crack, where he thought the case goes now, and why the damage may reach well beyond the boardroom. Alec recalled the day Jeremy Ord gave him the hairdryer treatment..Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview.(00:01) Alec Hogg: Well, for two years, Dimension Data's Campus Six, as we call them, said they'd done nothing wrong. Now there are five. Jason Goodall, who was once chief executive of the group, and then of NTT, the Japanese multinational that bought Didata some years ago, has signed a statement admitting that he was secretly on both sides of the R1.4 billion sale of The Campus. This is the middle of all the controversy. And he names Jeremy Ord, Steven Nathan, Saki Missaikos and Grant Bodley as fellow travellers. Just to put the seal on the deal, he's paying NTT R208[.6] million to make it all go away.They were the aristocrats of South Africa's tech industry, Ord and Co. So what happened? And what does it tell us about boardrooms, BEE and the people that we trust? David Shapiro has watched the market for more than five decades. If anybody knows what's going on behind the scenes, it's Mr Shaps. David, my goodness, I haven't seen anything like this ever before. Have you?(01:21) David Shapiro: No, and there's no necessity to get involved in this kind of transaction. But Alec, let's go back a bit. Go back to the Didata listing. Remember in 1987, when they were the darlings, as you mentioned, of the market. It was at a time when companies were introducing computers into their enterprises, and they needed switches and they needed networking, all of that. And Didata was one of the leading companies there. They weren't as sophisticated as we are now. There wasn't any kind of internet and so on, but you were still introducing... it was a big, big business. And their shares, everybody held their shares. The 1987 boom was underpinned by computer companies. Datatec was there. There were many, many businesses around there.And don't you remember the controversy that arose when, right at the top of the market, they sold their shares? This very same team got rid of their shares at the absolute peak, after which the share price, I think, plunged to maybe one-tenth of its value. And they justified it. Nothing was ever done, other than reputations were questionable. And I just put that in because people who've been around in the market that long will always remember that particular issue. They eventually sold it to NTT, and so they weren't really involved for many, many years, until this.(03:06) Alec Hogg: Sure. Well, this confession, though, is the thing that really staggered me. Here's the former CEO, one of the six. So it's like you've got six guys and they're sticking to their guns, and they say that the judge, Denise Fisher, who we can talk about in a moment, in her judgment, which was scathing of them, got it wrong. And now one of the six has turned to the other side. So, I mean, how does this happen? Your family, everybody you know, you're telling them a story. And now today, the former CEO of Didata and NTT, a very well-known guy, has now said, actually, I was lying.(03:56) David Shapiro: [It was always] going to happen. When you've got six people as part of a deal, someone's going to crack, someone's going to feel guilt, someone's not going to feel comfortable...(04:04) Alec Hogg: If it was wrong. If they were lying, basically.(04:05) David Shapiro: ...if they were lying. If they were lying. And I think it's always a danger when you do things like that, when you commit a crime, whether it's a white-collar crime or whatever it is. There's always some witness that will crack or feel the pressure.(04:22) David Shapiro: And I'm surprised that it did happen. I don't think he was part of the original Didata team. I think he came later on. And it must have been bothering him. You've got to continue the so-called lie, or the fabrication, for some time. Eventually, Alec, and this is what I can't understand, eventually the information leaks out. It comes out. There's somebody that's going to talk.And here it is, it's happened. Now what happens? He'll get away with it. He'll be the good guy. Everybody else is going to carry the can now, and their reputations are in tatters. And there could possibly be criminal charges, or certainly civil charges, against them for this. I'm not a legal expert, but I can't imagine that there are no criminal charges that could follow now. The original, I don't think, was a criminal case; it was a civil case. And then from civil, you can always see whether or not there's a basis for criminal charges. So Alec, no, no, no.(05:36) Alec Hogg: Have you met Jason Goodall, the guy who's kind of turned to the other side? I must admit I don't recall meeting him either. And I suppose I'm not as close to the tech world, and especially not to unlisted tech companies, as they now are. But I suppose it also must have taken either backbone or self-preservation.(06:02) David Shapiro: I think self-preservation. I think he probably couldn't continue feeling the guilt. And I don't know what was going to come of it afterwards, and not wanting to face the pressure, he felt, okay. It'll be very interesting to find out, and I've no doubt that you'll get to the bottom of the story of why he decided to confess and to pay back some of the money. You know, there's still a lot more that's going to come. I mean, what was the deal like? It was in the billions.(06:40) Alec Hogg: It was, Dave. It's R1.4 billion in total. And so if you divide it by six, it's not really much more than the R200 million that he's paying back, if they got it all, because they wouldn't have got it all. And there were BEE companies involved, and it was really complicated. When I interviewed Rob Rose on the judgment, on Denise Fisher's judgment two years ago...(07:06) David Shapiro: This came out some time ago. Two years ago.(07:10) Alec Hogg: ...and Judge Fisher's judgment was, as I mentioned in the intro, scathing, Jeremy Ord phoned me. And boy, did he shout at me. He gave me the, what was it called, the Alex Ferguson treatment...(07:24) David Shapiro: The hairdryer. The hairdryer. Yeah.Alec Hogg: I had to hold the cellphone away from my ear. The hairdryer treatment. He was furious. How dare I do this before asking him? Well, I have asked him today to talk, and he's referred me to Neil Lazarus. Neil Lazarus was a former colleague of yours, wasn't he? He's a sharp...(07:39) David Shapiro: I've known him. Well, very, very short-lived. But I've known him. I know his family well. His dad, Ivan, was a neighbour of mine. Yeah, no, he's a highly respected advocate. Senior counsel, sure. He's down in the Cape.(07:48) Alec Hogg: But he's sharp, isn't he? But how's Neil going to work his way out of this? Or do you think Neil even knew that this was the case? Because surely, if you've got a story that you're putting out there as an advocate, Neil Lazarus being the guy, then you now suddenly have a story that isn't the one you've been working on.(08:20) David Shapiro: I think Neil and Denise were quite close at one stage. I'm not quite sure. Advocates are always in a group, and I've no doubt Denise could have been in Neil's group. I'm not sure where Neil was, but they're certainly very well known to each other. Neil's sharp. He's a very, very sharp man. And I'm not sure what the defence is going to be.When somebody like this confesses, when somebody writes like this, it's very difficult to try and work your way out of it. I'm not a legal person and I'm not quite sure where it goes from now. Why they were trying to discredit him, or how they're going to do it. I think from the start it sat very uncomfortably with everyone, mainly in the sense of, why do they have to do it? How much money do you need? Especially having built up a business the size of Didata at the time that happened.And I knew the Ords. I was at Roosevelt High School, and the whole Ord family went there. Doc Watson was there. Jeremy was young. I was with Tim, who was his older brother. He was a year older than Tim. And then Richard, I think Richard was the oldest brother, if I'm not mistaken. I think he went into the military. But anyway, I knew them for a long time, and we were always proud of the success of these Old Rooseveltians, because there's not much we could really brag about, coming from Roosevelt. We weren't a Hilton or a Michaelhouse or anybody. We never had Springbok rugby players or cricketers. But anyway, here you are. We had a really top-class businessman.(10:17) David Shapiro: And at the time, they really were a good business. There was a blight on them when they sold out at the top. They might have been innocent, and I think over the years people forgot about that. But they came out of this enormously wealthy men, and that always bothered me. Why do you have to do this? Why do you have to put your reputation at stake? I don't know.(10:44) Alec Hogg: Well, one of the points with Jason Goodall is that he was being sued by NTT for his pension, which they'd paid out in the UK. And that pension, the retirement package, was $17.6 million. So, to your point, dollars...(10:58) David Shapiro: Dollars, dollars. Okay.Alec Hogg: So he's a very wealthy man. So he's giving up 70% of his pension, in other words. But giving up 70% of his pension, he's still going to be left with, what's that, about $5 million. That's okay. I think you and I could do pretty comfortably on that.(11:14) David Shapiro: We can eat fresh bread.Alec Hogg: But in return for this, he's now sold out the other guys. And my goodness, there's going to be a lot of backpedalling, one would think, on their behalf. And Neil Lazarus, who I haven't been able to get hold of. But Dave, when they sold at the top of the market, I don't know if you recall, but I recall it very, very closely, because there were interesting circumstances there. At the time, on the JSE, as a director you did not have to disclose your sales. But they had listed on the London Stock Exchange, where you did have to disclose your sales. And so we kept a note on the London market and then ran the article, did the piece.(11:50) David Shapiro: Yeah, that's right.(12:08) Alec Hogg: And I can tell you there was not happiness amongst the Didata executives at that stage. How things have changed today. As an executive... well, it wasn't disclosed in South Africa, but we picked it up in London.(12:15) David Shapiro: You mean that it was disclosed?Alec Hogg: They had to, in London. They had to. And so we then picked it up from London, told it here, and I never got invited back to a Didata pro-am or to an AGM dinner.David Shapiro: Yeah, but were they unhappy that it was disclosed? It shows you, you know. Sure.(12:33) Alec Hogg: But that was the way. But let's go back into the whole deal that Denise Fisher, sorry, Judge Denise Fisher [ruled on]. It was a BEE transaction that had been kind of played around with. Isn't that half the problem? Because you've got these BEE transactions, and it gets very complex and very murky sometimes.(12:54) David Shapiro: Yes. Yeah, they were interested parties. In other words, they had a financial interest in it, but it was never disclosed. So I think, like so many deals, you have to kind of wade your way through various structures to find out who the beneficiaries are. And I think this is what came out, after, I think, the Japanese, NTT, must have been suspicious of something. And they were on both sides. Remember, they were sellers and buyers. They were sellers of the building, and then they were buying for themselves as well. So how do you ever maintain that?And there's one thing that you might find. If we go back to a lot of the frauds that take place, white-collar fraud or any fraud, there's always one leader. There's always somebody there at the top of the board saying, we're going to do this, and everybody gets carried away with that. I think there's always some very dominant force. And I think this is Jeremy. He's a very strong character who must have led the others, even, like, with the sale of the shares. I know they were all very, very good friends, but you'll find that probably there's one strong person that decides upon it, puts it on the table, and then you're part of that group. You don't want to say, no, I don't want to go in, or whatever it is. When you go into white-collar crime, it's a very interesting area to delve into.(14:35) Alec Hogg: Is this a crime, Dave? Is this a crime, working on both sides for a principal?David Shapiro: But the big question... yes, yes. And how? You can't be an agent of both sides. I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to be able to find the exact areas of law that they've breached, but there's absolutely no doubt that you can't represent two people. You can't be an agent for both the buyer and seller, certainly. But that's not the point. I think the point is non-disclosure. That's where the crime's going to be. That you didn't disclose all of this, that you hid all of these things as well. And especially that it was in the guise of a BEE contract, and who ends up being the beneficiaries but six very, very wealthy people. I mean, it's probably a breach of I don't know how many different acts. So who knows? But I'm sure there's going to be a lot of damages. I think the worst is that no one's ever going to trust them again. They'll never be able to run a business.Reputationally, I think, this is the end. Look, they've been very low-key, so I don't know if that's going to make too much of a difference or not. But we're going to see. I think you need to talk to some legal people that are not involved in this to find out what the consequences can be of something like this. You can pay the Japanese back, you can pay NTT back, you can undo it, whatever it is, but at the end of the day, I don't know whether we are the kind of country that will enforce this. I don't know how strong they are, but it should be. If you were in the US, this case would be... one week or two weeks, you're already in court. They do things pretty fast. Alec, it just raises so many questions. In a country like ours, we're battling to fight corruption and to get rid of corruption and thievery and all of this. These are the last kind of people you'd think would be involved.(16:53) Alec Hogg: What do you think their defence will be? Let's just say you were sitting in the shoes of the five. What do they now say, given that one of their number, Jason Goodall, former CEO of the company, has actually said, no, no, this was a R1.4 billion deal, we were acting for the buyer and the seller on behalf of NTT. So we were really screwing our employer. He said that, and he's been unequivocal on that. So what do they say now? Because Jeremy did say that they'd be issuing a statement. What would you expect to see in that statement?(17:36) David Shapiro: That they weren't involved, that they're not involved. So they're going to stand by their original defence.(17:42) Alec Hogg: So that Jason was doing it on his own. That's basically... so it would be his word against theirs.(17:49) David Shapiro: Yeah, what else can they say? And that they're not involved. How do you ever disguise this kind of money? There again, I don't know where they filter it. I don't want to use the word launder, but obviously there was some kind of mechanism where the tax authorities or people couldn't find this money. So that's also going to be a very interesting way to find out: where did the money go? Who are the holders?The problem is that today, business can be so opaque, through various structures. Whenever I see the name Mauritius, I get nervous. Companies based in Mauritius, I get nervous. And unfortunately, I don't want to cast aspersions on anybody, but you've always got these suspicions: the various islands, or Panama and so on, where places just become post offices. I was reading a book, Dead in the Water, which is all about a massive fraud in the shipping industry that took place in 2011, an insurance fraud. And when you try and trace the holding companies... I mean, everybody got off. There were no criminal charges, there just wasn't an insurance payment. But you understand how these things can be hidden.(19:16) Alec Hogg: The opaqueness of international finance. But here we have a situation where foreign investors will be looking at South Africa and saying, hang on, a Japanese company came in, spent a lot of money, and its own executives, by Goodall's admission, screwed them. What a great place to do business. You think it'll scare foreign investors off, Dave?(19:37) David Shapiro: Excuse me. Yeah, no, it's awful. I mean, it's awful that they were running this business, and how many employees are involved together with them who are now tainted. Alec, look, you're a West Ham supporter, so maybe... but have a look at the Man City debacle and the damage that this is going to do. I'm bringing up what can happen. Yes, we can't judge it yet, they're on appeal, but I mean, the way that they hid transactions... We've gone through so many of these situations, the Steinhoff situation as well, where money was channelled through various sources to hide the real accounts, or to inflate accounts. So there are ways in that, but how people think like that, I don't know. It's hard enough for me following the market and reading company results. I mean, why? What do they want?(20:53) Alec Hogg: David, remember there was a Supreme Court of Appeal hearing. So Judge Fisher came out with her judgment. It was damning against the Campus Six, now Campus Five plus Goodall. They then appealed it. And in May, the Supreme Court of Appeal reserved judgment. Will this affect that judgment, do you think, if you're the judges looking at it?(21:21) David Shapiro: Of course. Absolutely. Because there was no confession. There was no signed admission. So this is going to change... it's got to change the evidence that was put forward. And now, I don't know how the legal process works, but surely now you can cross-examine them again on the basis of this. If new evidence comes forward, aren't you entitled now to re-examine the case? It's not gone. I don't know.(21:58) Alec Hogg: But you would think the six would hold off for the appeal, because they might have got away with it, and they might still get away with it, if the law is... We'll find out tomorrow. I'm going to talk to Paul Hoffman tomorrow and just ask him what the processes are from a legal perspective. But you would think, from a public perspective, now that you've got one of them that has actually admitted it... I mean, the timing could not be worse for Jeremy Ord and Co, because they were just waiting on an appeal court judgment which may have gone in their favour. Who knows?(22:37) David Shapiro: I think you must start to investigate why he did it at this time, and how this is going to end. I think people like Paul certainly have the qualifications to talk about it. But Alec, we're looking from outside. I'm certainly an outsider looking in on this, and just questioning why people do this, what the need is, and how they think they're going to get away with it. And would you believe it's legitimate? I mean, this was done quite a few years ago, I think, but when it was first raised, you automatically start to ask questions. Why was it there? Why did it come up? Why were these questions being asked? Even if you can get away with it on a legal technicality, at the end of the day there's always that question mark about you and about your reputation.(23:44) Alec Hogg: One curious thing about all of this, before we go, was that Goodall did not name Doc Watson. So he named the others. There were six in total, himself included, and he named only four, not Doc Watson. Why would that be, Dave?(24:03) David Shapiro: I don't know. Doc Watson might be so far removed from him. I think he's in Australia. I don't think he's really connected with him in any way. And he might not have been at meetings. Even though he was part of the group, he could have been away from it and not part of the decision-making. I'm not sure how he would have reacted. It'd be very interesting to question him or to have an interview, not that he would ever say anything now against this kind of background. But it might have been that over the years he had distanced himself from the group. I think he's been in Australia for many, many years. Whether he was still working for them or doing anything, I don't know.(24:48) Alec Hogg: But he went along for the ride and made the money, so I guess, you know.(24:52) David Shapiro: That's also [a question]. I don't know. We'll see. I think it's going to give us some more headlines, something to look into. But it is the fact that he came in... I think when you're part of a criminal group, someone's going to crack. Someone's going to feel it, can't sleep at night, can't get away with it. The worry, the constant worry every night. It never leaves you. You can't put your head on the pillow at night and sleep, worrying about what the final consequences are of this, whether the court goes in your favour. And then you say, listen, I just want peace of mind.(25:40) Alec Hogg: David Shapiro is South Africa's favourite stockbroker. Thank you, Dave, as always, for sharing your wisdom with us. There's one thing that comes back to me: there's nothing more powerful than the truth. And in this instance, certainly according to Jason Goodall, the truth has finally come out. I'm sure that Sonja de Bruyn and the BEE grouping are now feeling vindicated, and not least Judge Denise Fisher, who came in for a lot of criticism for her judgment. But today, well, she looks like some kind of a genius. I'm Alec Hogg from BizNews.com..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.