The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
SPECIAL FEATURE | THE INDEPENDENT & AGENCIES | When Tongaat Hulett began its journey in Southern Africa, the global sugar industry was shedding off its reliance on slavery, especially in the West Indies and America after its civil war. Government control, for a product that was as important as oil and critical minerals are today to the global economy, was giving way to private enterprise. In Africa, better machines and investment signaled the rise of new markets and opportunities. This is what Tongaat Hulett symbolized throughout its history alongside the problematic history of a sugar giant located in a region where land, labor, and identity revealed other struggles for equality and fairness. Now 150 years old and still a mainstay buyer for especially black sugar outgrowers, the agri-giant is facing a dissolution as debt, mismanagement, and corporate brigandry threaten its future and legacy.
Founded in 1875, Tongaat Hulett was once one of Southern Africa’s most prominent sugar producers. But by the early 2020s, the company was drowning in debt, its shares suspended from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, and its sprawling empire teetering. In 2022, it formally entered business rescue, an attempt to avoid outright liquidation and salvage value for stakeholders.
This crisis was covered by the ZimTracker here (click to read ).
So far what has followed suggests a major episode for African regulators. The Kagera Sugar conglomerate of businessman Seif Ali Sief of Tanzania was one of the initial top bidders, raising hopes of a super merger of African sugar businesses. This never materialized.
Instead, a potent mix of international corporate action figures from Pakistan to Zimbabwe and a calendar of missed deadlines, competition for the sugar giant’s sprawling assets, and business amidst attempts to keep it a single entity may be squaring against a poorly disguised attempt to strip it for parts instead of consolidating it as a Pan-African business.
The first attempt at saving the company came in the form of a R2 billion offer from Zimbabwe’s Rudland family, a prominent tobacco-based empire with a history of ethical misconduct. It fell apart quickly. South Africa’s Takeover Regulation Panel declared a key shareholder resolution invalid after uncovering suspicious share purchases linked to tobacco baron Simon Rudland’s business associate. Publicly, fears swelled that the deal might be a front for laundering illicit funds into the legitimate economy.
With the Rudlands out, focus turned to another bidder: the Vision Consortium.
Saviors or raiders?
Composed of four companies, Guma Agri and Food, Almoiz Group, Remoggo, and Terris Agripro, the Vision Consortium proposed a debt-to-equity swap that would give them 97.3% ownership of Tongaat. Creditors approved the plan in January 2024. But despite multiple extensions, the group has failed to deliver the promised funds.
Standard Bank’s decision to provide a credit facility to the Vision Consortium appears to have functioned as a regulatory shield, creating false comfort for oversight bodies that lacked the resources or mandate to look deeper. This may represent a common flaw in regulatory thinking: that traditional banking due diligence can substitute for comprehensive regulatory oversight in business rescue situations. Banks assess credit risk and commercial viability; they don’t evaluate whether their clients are suitable custodians of major national assets or have the track record to deliver on rescue promises. The Vision Group’s ability to secure banking backing while missing every subsequent funding deadline for 18 months is a bad sign.
The missed payment dates tell a cautionary tale. Instead of a rescue, Tongaat may end up broken up and sold for parts, one of the fears associated initially with the Rudland family bid (that they planned to retain the business in Zimbabwe and dispose of the rest of the company). In any case, Vision Consortium has not honored any of its obligations thus far. It missed a payment deadline in December 2023, then in January 2024, March 2025, and most recently, April 30, 2025.
On closer scrutiny, the fears of corporate piracy have some foundation.
The Vision Consortium’s corporate structure is another reason to be concerned, as it includes diverse entities scattered across multiple jurisdictions that can act to minimize oversight and maximize operational flexibility.
Mauritius serves as the incorporation hub, hosting Remoggo and Terris Agripro with light oversight of their activities. Terris Agripro is managed by Trident Trust, a firm exposed in the Pandora Papers for enabling global tax evasion.
Pakistan provided the Almoiz Group with operational cover despite their involvement in major sugar industry scandals that should have disqualified them from participating in any sugar-related transaction globally.
Zimbabwe offered regulatory approval through its Competition and Tariff Commission in April 2025, apparently unaware of or unconcerned about the group’s advantages.
In South Africa, where the group is rallying its bid, there are no signs that the collective risk profile of this international network of problematic actors is being considered. The extensive use of offshore jurisdictions by consortium members suggests regulatory arbitrage, a system that can undermine legitimate oversight. Complex corporate structures spanning the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, and Mauritius make comprehensive due diligence nearly impossible while providing plausible deniability for individual participants
Thus, no single regulator appears to have taken responsibility for assessing the consortium as a whole.
Some would argue a strong foundation, considering the same fears were present in the Rudland affair. Lifting the dense fog behind the Vision Consortium reveals a cast of characters whose resumes leave a lot of room for concern—especially with regulators.
Take businessmen Mr. Amre Youness, a discreet yet deeply entangled financier behind Terris Agripro, whose past deals and associations leave a faint but troubling trail across the world.
The consortium also includes Robert Gumede, the public face of the deal, a well-known South African entrepreneur and philanthropist who has been under investigation for multiple corruption allegations. The other, the Almoiz Group, a Pakistani sugar conglomerate, has been implicated in one of Pakistan’s largest sugar subsidy scandals, accused of manipulating markets and defrauding the state. In Zimbabwe Rutenhuro Moyo, behind Remoggo, may be backed by Zimbabwe’s controversial sovereign wealth fund, now overseen by President Mnangagwa’s son. Moyo’s past involvement with Tongaat subsidiary Hippo Valley makes him a de facto inside man and raises potential conflict of interest in the transaction.
Amre Youness, the financier behind Terris Agripro amongst all the Vision partners, stands out for the scale and complexity of controversy that trails him. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, and now a holder of UAE and UK passports (after renouncing his US citizenship in 2017), he is known for his fiercely guarded privacy and network of international financial ties. He married into the Heinz family of the U.S., one of America’s most storied dynasties, and splits time between London and California while owning a game reserve in South Africa so private that legal battles have been waged to prevent public access.
Youness has deep ties to the disgraced oligarch Patokh Chodiev and once served as a corporate advisor to ENRC, a mining giant dogged by corruption and fraud probes stretching from Kazakhstan to Africa. Though he denies involvement in the alleged misconduct, Youness chaired several of their South African investments, including Samancor Chrome and Shaftsinkers. Samancor is now infamous for a $500 million fraud claim involving alleged looting from its Black Economic Empowerment trust, detailed in court affidavits. Shaftsinkers was delisted from the London Stock Exchange and collapsed into insolvency amid lawsuits, unpaid debts, and allegations of bribery.
His other ventures, including Afrimax, a failed telecom startup that secured Vodafone branding across Zambia, Uganda, Ghana, Malawi, and Cameroon before abruptly collapsing, underscore a pattern of opaque, if complex, financial structuring, offshore registration, and poor delivery. Even Terris Agripro, the vehicle through which he is participating in the Tongaat bid, is registered at a tax haven address in Mauritius and managed by Trident Trust, a firm exposed in the Pandora Papers for enabling global tax evasion.
More than any other figure, Youness encapsulates the concerns surrounding the Tongaat deal: opaque, elusive, and operating through a global web of companies and connections that can resist accountability and disguise intentions. What makes Youness especially worrying to observers is not just his history of proximity to controversy but his proven ability to operate behind layers of legal and financial opacity. While others in the Vision Consortium appear politically exposed or tainted by industry scandals, Youness represents something of a more sophisticated and perhaps more dangerous challenge: a transnational dealmaker whose intricate structures, offshore havens, and elusive paper trails have repeatedly placed him one step ahead of regulators.
As the Tongaat Hulett deal appears to unravel, many are beginning to suspect that the entire operation may have been shaped by a global playbook from his experience from the outset.
The consortium’s repeated failure to show proof of funding, despite Standard Bank backing and regulatory green lights, has prompted growing suspicion that Tongaat Hulett is not being rescued but carved up. A fallback clause in the deal allows for asset liquidation if the equity conversion fails, a scenario that now seems increasingly likely despite Vision Group’s recent public assurances.
As the Vision Consortium continues to stall and scrutiny intensifies, one thing is clear: this is no simple story of economic turnaround.
Critics allege the entire rescue plan could be a corporate Trojan horse, a smokescreen designed to enable asset stripping and profit extraction under the guise of corporate salvation. Needless to say, thousands of jobs are at risk.
Sugar is a known conduit for trade-based money laundering, and the opacity surrounding Vision’s finances only amplifies concern. Tongaat’s legacy as a bedrock of regional agriculture is in play, but so is the history of the sugar industry, often plagued with scandal from Egypt to Kenya.
Locally it is also baffling how this “new” deal advanced while the Rudlands were blocked and if regulators shall wither criticism about the official reasons one rescue was preferred to another.
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