UAM Fallout

Martin Feinstein, a shareholder in the the defunct media group Union Alliance Media (UAM), has laid fraud charges against former UAM director Carina de Beer and chief executive Anthony Glass for allegedly providing UAM subsidiary Concept Marketing as the surety for a R20 million loan from FirstRand. According to Feinstein, De Beer allegedly signed a document purporting that Concept's board had approved of the company being used as surety at a meeting on 10 September 1999. At the time, however, De Beer was not a UAM director, and Concept's board members do not recall the meeting ever being held, Feinstein claimed. Glass had claimed that a UAM director, Martin Smit, had attended the board meeting, but his passport shows that he was in Tuscany on that date, Feinstein says.