Durban - Would-be holiday-makers from across South Africa may have to cough up more money if they want to see justice after being duped out of their hard-earned cash by the CEO of Hello Darlings, Tasneem Moosa, and her merry band of influencers.
Moosa announced yesterday during a live interview that she was advised by her legal team to take the “liquidation route” to pay back the money to unsuspecting residents who trusted her.
But, is Moosa taking the easy way out because, according to legal sources, the liquidation of a business rarely ends up with its customers getting their money back?
If a business owner decides to liquidate, then its contractual agreements with organisations would have to be settled first, then the people, according to Durban-based lawyer Larissa Singh.
Singh compared the Hello Darlings scandal to a similar case she worked on last year. A travel company decided to liquidate, leaving its customers, who booked holidays, without a refund. It has been two years since they booked and have not received a refund because the company liquidated.
She said that if people want to attach her personal belongings to the case in order to get their money back, it would be a very costly legal affair as Moosa’s dealings were attached to her company and not her personally.
The process of liquidation involves a company selling off assets in order to settle its liabilities. But before refunding customers, said business owes money to, it must first settle its preferred creditors.
“It is a very easy way out to get liquidated and say the company cannot afford to pay creditors, so they are going under liquidation. If there is money left, whoever the preferred creditors are will get paid first. If there is no money left for everybody, then sorry.
“It would be hard to go after her personally because she acted in her capacity as owner or director. She was not acting in her personal capacity but on behalf of the company. Let's say she has assets worth one million rand. If she sells those assets and gets a million, but if you essentially owe people more, who gets the chunk of that million?” Singh told IOL.
During Moosa’s interview on GlowTV, she admitted that she advertised for new holidays with the intention to pay off older ones.
Moosa said: “So if I ran into a loss, I sold another trip to pay for a current trip. Maybe that qualifies as the definition of a pyramid scheme, but the intention was never for it to be a scheme. When I started to get into trouble, I advertised more trips in order to fulfil those trips.”
If Moosa admitted doing this, then she intentionally acted fraudulently, Singh explained.
“If you know you are taking money, but you are not going to deliver, then that is fraud. Somewhere along the line, she must have known that someone will get burnt,” she added.
Administrator of the Telegram group formed to expedite the recovery of client funds, Mohamed Faraaz Akoo, said the group has been “steadily receiving a large number of cases”.
There are around 370 criminal cases opened against Hello Darlings. He said investment capital into Hello Darlings and trip refunds stands at just over R28 million at present.
“There are some who are still not aware and that is why we have to thank the media as well for their assistance in creating awareness so those affected have some form of free support,” Akoo said.
A resident affected by the Hello Darlings scandal, who was recently interviewed by IOL, said she recently ended up in hospital because of major panic attacks. Her and several other family members paid around half a million Rand to Hello Darlings to book various holidays.
IOL