Creditors target Bushiri’s SA assets

Cred­it­ors and the state are intensi­fy­ing efforts to attach the assets of fugit­ive Malawian pas­tor Shep­herd Bushiri and his wife, Mary, six years after they had fled SA while facing crim­inal charges. Among the latest cases is a High Court mat­ter involving Absa Vehicle & Asset Fin­ance and a Range Rover linked to Mary. Papers filed in the Gauteng High Court (Johan­nes­burg) show the bank insti­tuted action against Mary in con­nec­tion with a 2018 Land Rover Range Rover 4.4 SD V8. Accord­ing to the bank’s par­tic­u­lars of claim, the fin­ance agree­ment was con­cluded on or about 12 March 2020. The Sunday Times reports that it contends that the agree­ment spe­cified that ‘own­er­ship of the vehicle would remain ves­ted in the plaintiff until all amounts due by the defend­ant in terms of the agree­ment had been paid in full’. In cor­res­pond­ence attached to the sum­mons, attor­neys act­ing for the bank instruc­ted sher­iffs to per­son­ally serve the doc­u­ments on Mary. ‘In terms of the amended rule four of the court rules that came into effect on 12 April 2024, all High Court sum­monses need to be served per­son­ally on the defend­ant,’ the cor­res­pond­ence states. The mount­ing legal battles come as Bushiri is attempt­ing to block the imple­ment­a­tion of an asset for­feit­ure order obtained by the NPA to seize a lux­ury air­craft linked to him. Bushiri filed heads of argu­ment at the Gauteng High Court (Pre­toria) on 6 March in a bid to halt the enforce­ment of the for­feit­ure order as part of ongo­ing crim­inal invest­ig­a­tions tied to him. The Bushiris fled SA in Novem­ber 2020 after being gran­ted bail on charges includ­ing fraud, money laun­der­ing, and con­tra­ven­tions of immig­ra­tion and fin­an­cial laws. Sep­ar­ate lit­ig­a­tion insti­tuted by the City of Johan­nes­burg reveals that muni­cipal author­it­ies are also pur­su­ing debts of more than R1.4m allegedly owed by Prophet Shep­herd Bushiri Min­is­tries and Bushiri per­son­ally.