Noseweek Magazine - 0861travel article full of lies and deceit

There has been a lot of inaccurate reports from journalists Melany Bendix on behalf of TIR magazine and Noseweek. These articles are defamatory and full of lies and deceit.

It would be obvious for 0861Travel and the Rays to say this, therefore one has to go back a while to see what motivates these reports which are aimed at smearing the good name of 0861Travel and the Rays. This motivation is no more than revenge and money.

The story begins with a concept of Afritourism Ltd, a company which listed on the Botswana Stock Exchange. The Rays were an integral part of the concept which was well documented in the prospectus. The Rays were never in any executive role on the main board and had no control and say over any of its financial management.

As can be read from reports tabled in other posts, Afritourism, lead by the CEO Glynn O’Leary, totally mismanaged the finances of the company in the first 6 months, posted dismal results, were suspended from the Stock Exchange and went into voluntary liquidation.

The Rays, whose part it was to do the sales and reservations and develop a lodge in Sea Point, Cape Town were the lone voices warning the non-executives of this mismanagement.

It was apparent that the Directors, led by Glynn ‘Leary, were not going to implement the sales and reservations system, as contemplated in the Prospectus. As can be seen by their dismal results, the Directors did not want the transparent and highly accountable system to be implemented as they were manipulating financial information for their own gain. The Rays then called for a management buyout of their sales and reservations company, which was vetted by Afritourism and Glynn O’Leary. After this it was bought to Mrs. Ray’s attention that the lodge she was managing on behalf of Afritourism in Sea Point, had projections presented to the Board of Afritourism, which would require her to operate at 100% occupancy. She approached Barry Grey, the group Accountant, who did not give satisfactory answers. In terms of her fiduciary obligations, she reported this to the accountants and the non-executives of Afritourism. Within 3 weeks of this letter, she was suspended and later fired, and illegally removed as director of the lodge. She won her case at the CCMA, contrary to the lie reported by Noseweek.

After this event, the Stock Exchange in Botswana grew wary of the inconsistent financial information they were getting from Afritourism and when their financial statements were late they were suspended. The Stock Exchange did not stop at this. They ordered an investigation into the affairs of Afritourism. An investigation was conducted throughout Southern Africa by Deloitte Touché. The bottom line is that executive directors were fighting amongst themselves, drew huge salaries and expense accounts, mismanaged the business, unauthorized expenditure on assets not reported in the Prospectus, and most of all did not stick to the business plan as contemplated by the Prospectus. Before the AGM, Glynn O’Leary was fired, but at the AGM was appointed as a non-executive director.

Before this report could be made public, the company went into voluntary liquidation – how convenient?

All of Glynn O’Leary, Karl Heinz Gimpel and Tim Fincham had never examined the reservations and accounting systems, so how they can even comment is a mystery, but perhaps this is indicative of how they ran Afritourism.

Obviously, the firing of Glynn O’Leary and the suspension of Afritourism struck a hard blow for Glyn O’Leary, a former director of the now defunct Tollgate.

Revenge was born.

Glynn O’Leary is connected to the media industry, and had a partner by the name of John Simpson in a company called Global Images. John Simpson is the director and Chief Editor of TIR Magazine (Travel Industry Review).

As a bonus, one of their columnists is Louis Nel, who is a mediator on legal matters in the Travel Industry. Louis Nel represents some franchisees wishing to get out of their contracts. The three wise men (Glynn O’Leary, Louis Nel and John Simpson), got together, and hatched a plot to totally smear the good name of the Rays and 0861Travel. Approximately a year ago, Louis Nel became involved in approaching franchisees to join him in his quest to discredit 0861Travel. This information was then passed on to Melany Bendix. Before the first report came out on 0861 Travel, the issue regarding the Sea Point property was already known to Melany Bendix, and these lies were spread to Franchisees to pitch them against 0861Travel. Their theme has been that the Rays sell something which has no backing. They are prepared to make this statement, and yet, not once have any of the parties, including Melany Bendix, bothered to ask the right questions and be transparent about all the issues. Included in this, some obvious things were not investigated, like:
1. 0861Travel’s balance sheets. This tells a factual picture far different to what has been reported.
2. MultiRes. No one has bothered to properly examine the system, using any expert from they industry that they wish.
3. Examine all methodology and processes used by the Franchisor.

Instead, they have had a certain goal in mind, and everything they have written has been molded to their goal and not the facts.

It is an interesting story on how the Franchisees are doing what they have done, and as usual it is only superficial and selective reporting which has told their whole story.

In August of 2006, certain Franchisees had an idea to make a bid for ownership of the 0861Travel company. It is understandable that people would want direct control of a great concept, product and brand which had taken a number of years to develop.

Negotiations of which the Rays were unaware of at the time were underway, and in September 2006, after certain clandestine meetings between the Franchisees had taken place, an offer was put forward to the Rays to purchase the company from them outright. Unfortunately for the Franchisees this offer was in turn rejected outright.

Incensed at the rejection and acutely aware that they were tied into 10 year contracts each and having a now very strained relationship with the Franchisor in terms of the manner in which the bid was made, certain Franchisees then decided to create an environment in which they would ultimately try and legally get themselves out of their Franchisee agreements. With much collusion and underhandedness, certain Franchisees in association with Louis Nel banded together to bring the 0861Travel group to its knees. Louis Nel not only is an industry legal expert, but of all co-incidences he happens to be a columnist for TIR magazine. Not even the devil himself could have dreamed up a better partnership.

It is interesting to note that since the initial TIR story broke, that both TIR and Louis Nel have approached the Ray’s individually and on behalf of the Franchisees to “resolve” their dispute. However, it appears that there is clearly no dispute, just a number of people desiring to get out of a contractual obligation using Machiavellian tactics.

0861Travel is an awesome concept and a business that has performed well according to its model. In fact, Noseweek magazine starts off by saying in their first article that “Industry experts agree that 0861Travel is a great concept”, and they then end off by saying that it actually a scam. So all of the stores that were built, operations that were put in place; and a business model that Industry people say is a good one must just be figments of peoples’ imagination??? Talk about contradictory!

Not only this, they say that the Ray’s sell to lower class people??? I wonder how the Franchisees would like to be called lower class people?? How do you make this kind of judgment on a person?
What happened to objectivity and plain old good fashioned reasoning. It apparently all flies out the window when you “report” using only emotions based upon fallacious statements and unbridled desire for revenge.

The property deal in Sea Point included 2 contracts; one for the purchase of the property and one for the sales, marketing and reservations for the property as a hospitality establishment. All parties knew that their purchase was based on occupancy to give them returns. The funds that were paid in to ITS was for the sales, marketing and reservations for the property and not the purchase of the property. The company has committed itself to repaying this money on the sympathetic aspect that the participants had no control over the deal going wrong.

The sellers of the property were given a copy of the approval by the bank which required that the 16 flats be sold. They were therefore aware that sales contracts had to be entered into. This was then endorsed by a purchase and sale agreement given by the sellers containing no suspensive conditions.

Two properties were involved. One was the main lodge and the other was the block of 16 flats. If the property deal had gone through, a substantial benefit would accrue to the Rays through the purchase of the Lodge. Therefore the Rays had everything to gain by the deal going through.

More to follow..........