Had Sultan Ahmed Chunoum Al-Hameli known his prospective business partners in a new yacht building venture had another company that was tens of millions of rand in debt, he would not have invested a single cent with them, he told the Gqeberha Specialised Commercial Crimes Court on Tuesday.

And after wasting four years of his life waiting for a yacht that never materialised, and losing close to R20m, he had nothing more to show than a poorly built shell of a boat, worth less than 1% of what he had put in, he said...