Publications
Partners
At the age of 83, new tech gold prospector Theo Joubert has embarked on a one-man crusade to clean up South Africa’s embryo electronic waste industry that reclaims gold, silver and plutonium from scrapped computer circuit boards.
Electronic scrap recycling is big business in Europe and the US and the global market is expected to grow to $34 billion by 2022. Corrosive-resistant gold has historically been used as favoured conductor in the manufacture of circuit boards and smartphones. But retrieving it is high volume labour-intensive stuff – you need a ton of PC circuit boards to yield 5 troy ounces of gold.
But Joubert claims that his project has been somewhat frustrated by Metal Concentrators, the country’s largest independent precious metals refinery – MetCon for short. He has taken MetCon to court for allegedly under-paying him by more than R20 million for his electronic waste.
According to Joubert, the evidence is contained in an 80-page affidavit that he says details widespread scams in the e-waste industry, including transfer pricing and tax fraud. The affidavit also fingers the South African Diamond and Precious Metals Regulator and the police’s Forensic Science Laboratory, for alleged complicity, heel-dragging and cover-up.
The battling oldtimer has filed a compensation claim against MetCon in the South Gauteng high court. A trial date was set, but at Joubert’s request the case was postponed sine die (for an indefinite period) while his attorney, Trevor Swartz, fine-tunes his client’s newly-emerged affidavit with documentary attachments, in the hope that the fresh evidence will persuade MetCon to settle out of court.
MetCon, annual turnover around R3.5 billion, is licensed by the Diamond Regulator and the Reserve Bank to produce and sell gold, silver and plutonium bars at its refineries in Joburg and Cape Town. Founded in 1989 by metallurgist Bernard Stern and his wife Hilary, the company sells 100gm gold bars for R61 523, 1kg silver bars (very popular) for R10 142 and 1oz platinum bars for R15 367.
MetCon had some success extracting precious metals from computer circuit boards, but last year founder Bernard Stern sold out to Neville Crosse, chairperson of listed specialised chemicals maker Omnia.
But Crosse, who sold 102 Omnia shares for R181 million to fund the purchase, said he’s put a stop to this method of gold retrieval. “Lots of people have tried, but there’s so little precious metals in there that most of them gave up.”
Crosse (63) is aware of Joubert’s high court claim against MetCon, but insists that liability rests with the company’s previous owners Stern. He claimed he was surprised to hear that the 83-year-old’s claim is now more than R20 million.
“The last I heard it was something like a couple hundred thousand.”
Stern said it would not be appropriate for him to go into the merits of Joubert’s postponed high court claim.
“He delivered electronic/computer equipment for recovery of previous metals. He has approached other companies to process the scrap and was not happy with their quotes. We apparently paid more than the other companies quoted.”
Stern said: “I don’t believe that his claim has any merit. He has perceived value without actually sampling and analysis of the scrap. Unfortunately this does happen with inexperienced people. I have no knowledge of any transfer pricing, tax abuse or any other wrongdoing in South Africa’s e-waste industry.”
Our calls for comment to the Diamond Regulator’s office about Joubert’s wider industry allegations were in vain. City Press was denied permission to either speak to chief executive Levy Rapoo, the organisation’s communications unit or a person who handles press enquiries.
When asked who handles press, an emphatic “No one!” was the answer.
Last year the taxpayer funded the loss-making parastatal to the tune of R47.8 million.
