A web of greed and a call for justice.
BHI Trust was a brazen fraudulent Ponzi scheme that swallowed between R1.9 billion and R3 billion. One question burns brighter than all others: Where is the money?
That’s what I’ve been asking since the first cracks in this financial house of cards appeared. That’s what I’ve been trying to uncover. And that’s precisely what someone – perhaps many someones – seems desperate to keep buried.
The official narrative fixates on the South African authorities’ limp-wristed response: a sluggish investigation, a reluctance to prosecute, a familiar tune in the symphony of high-stakes failures.
Think of Advocate Shamila Batohi, head of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), slogging toward her January 2026 retirement, or Mavuso Msimang’s old quip about Home Affairs being a greased pole: same struggle, different stage.
But I’m not here to lament the NPA’s toothless tenure – my faith in their gusto flatlined under Shaun ‘The Sheep’ Abrahams years ago.
My focus is sharper: the money trail and the broader net of polished enablers who helped reel it in.
ALSO READ: BHI Trust: FSCA expands scope of investigation to financial services providers
Deafening silence
Craig Warriner, the linchpin of BHI Trust, turned himself in back in September 2023. Refusing to testify, he demanded jail time – 25 years, a life sentence at age 60 – under a plea deal that promised his cooperation.
The NPA leapt at it, eager to wrap him up and call it a win. That deal? Full disclosure on co-conspirators and the fate of those billions. Yet here we are, 18 months later, and the silence is deafening – no updates on Warriner’s leads. There is no visible pursuit of the cash.
Instead, the NPA and the South African Police Service (SAPS) bundled at least 100 victims’ complaints – filed against financial advisors who funnelled them into BHI – into Warriner’s case, then slammed the door shut the moment he was sentenced.
I want the judgment, the plea deal, and the police docket.
The NPA, which has branded me “rude” in our sparse exchanges, hasn’t once hinted at chasing Warriner’s evidence. The press gets the same stonewall. The only thread of a case still dangling owes its life to a private citizen strong-armed into compliance: don’t disrupt Warriner’s sentencing, and we’ll “vigorously pursue” a new case, they said.
That case – targeting Michael Haldane of Global & Local Investment Advisors and Sona Pillay of Rubicon Trust – was “provisionally withdrawn” on 11 March 2025. Vigorously pursued, indeed.
ALSO READ: Some BHI Trust investors served with letters of demand
Advisor ‘engineered the fraud’
Haldane’s fingerprints are everywhere. He and his associate Mauro Forlin were banned for 30 years by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) in October 2024, a year after BHI’s collapse.
The FSCA found they peddled BHI Trust – an unlicensed outfit – to clients, including pensioners with no safety net, ignoring risk profiles and red flags.
Those flags waved as early as 2013 when an insider tipped off the FSCA. Global & Local’s own compliance officer raised alarms in 2017. A senior investment advisor echoed the warning that year. The FSCA began probing in 2020 – yet Haldane and Forlin kept selling, profiting, and keeping the Ponzi’s pulse alive.
Nine years of smoke and the FSCA only acted after the fire was ash.
The NPA’s investigation? A farce. They’ve questioned maybe three victims – I know them personally – and skipped anything tied to the FSCA’s findings. Instead, they leaned on Global & Local’s key players, letting the enablers spin the tale.
The joint trustees, tasked with clawing back losses, weren’t even consulted – though one trustee handed the NPA evidence of fraud, theft, and money laundering, zeroing in on Pillay. The NPA’s response to press inquiries? It’s a flat denial.
My investigation found Haldane didn’t just enable the fraud, he also engineered it.
He birthed the Rubicon Administration, Rubicon Trust, Amalgum 108 (BHI+), and Wasabi in the British Virgin Islands (later BHI International) to siphon fees and bleed clients dry.
Even under FSCA scrutiny in 2020, he urged investors to double down, pumping lifeblood into a dying scam. Hundreds of millions in profits later, he stashed his haul offshore. Warriner’s claim that BHI laundered cash for clients only thickens the plot – a sloppy, opportunistic money machine.
ALSO READ: BHI Trust: Family says Craig Warriner’s Ponzi destroyed them
The wreckage left behind
But this isn’t about the mechanics of greed. It’s about the wreckage left behind.
This isn’t a tale of lost generational wealth – it’s the theft of entire lives.
Road Accident Fund payouts, trust funds, dread disease cover, nest eggs of mothers, fathers, grandparents – gone.
Every age, every race, gutted by a betrayal so vast it defies comprehension. That’s the story: not the advisors, not the regulators, but the ordinary people they crushed.
This is a disgrace of fiduciary failure, a masterclass in negligence and opportunism.
The NPA and SAPS have no excuse. The plea deal, the FSCA reports, and the trustees’ findings are roadmaps to justice.
Haldane, Pillay, and their ilk must face charges.
Their ill-gotten gains must be seized and returned to the joint trustees, just as “dividends” are being clawed back from devastated investors.
Yes, the fine print said “unregulated”, as the NPA seems to fixate, but advisors knew it was a Ponzi – illegal and rotten to the core – and sold it anyway, even after they were told.
A civilised society doesn’t shrug at this. It demands answers, hunts the money, jails the architects, and restores the victims. Anything less is complicity.
Bart Henderson is a forensic investigator who has been investigating BHI since October 2023.
This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.
