SAFE
Farming scam exposed in South Africa
Anton de Vries is a Dutch businessman and fruit exporter whose companies, Safe and Bono, are strategic partners in the government's agrarian reform and recapitalization programme. De Vries owns and manages scores of farms in South Africa.
He is the subject of an investigation by SABC's Special Assignment for allegedly swindling beneficiaries of the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform policies out of their profits.
Through his company, South African Fruit Exporters, De Vries owns 50% of Bono, a BEE company.
In their scam, Safe and Bono manages 29 farms in South Africa, one of them is Kangela, a citrus farm in the Eastern Cape.
For the past decade, Democratic Alliance provincial leader Athol Trollip has been trying to expose Safe and Bono. He says corruption is destroying the future of land reform in South Africa.
On its website, Bono advertises its certification by Fair-trade, an international body that sets standards for exports, based on adequate labour and living conditions for farming communities. But Bono was decertified in July 2015 for non-compliance.
Source: sabc.co.za
