Bushiri faces sequestration over $13.8m loan

The assets of Enlightened Christian Gathering Church leader Shepherd Bushiri could be sequestrated because of the pastor’s failure to oppose an ex parte application brought to the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) by his creditors, identified as JM Busha Investment group. City Press reports that the sequestration hearing is expected to take place in the same court on 27 May. The Johannesburg-based investment company had initially filed its affidavit in November 2020 after Bushiri and his wife Mary had skipped the country after they had been granted bail when charged with fraud, theft and money laundering. The company’s founding papers, deposed by its director Joseph Makamba Busha, cite the basis of the sequestration as that Bushiri had committed an act of insolvency and was unable to repay loans awarded to him between 2011 and 2018.

The report notes that the papers show that the cleric ignored a 2020 court order that instructed him to repay $13.8m, and the company consequently decided that a sequestration order was the ultimate recourse to recoup its monies. The terms of the order were that the applicant could dispose of various immovable properties and the applicant could perfect its pledge of various movable assets that were subjected to general notarial bond. According to the order, notes City Press, Bushiri was supposed to pay R100m before 20 April 2020 and R103.5m before May last year.