The Mpumalanga couple arrested in November 2023 for allegedly mining coal on a farm in the frigid town of Carolina suffered more setback when their eight Namibian bank accounts with a stash of R52 million were seized by authorities.

The accounts belong to Jacobus Hosea Jordaan and his wife Elza Jordaan. 

The seizure of the bank accounts was a result of joint work by the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) Asset Forfeiture Unit, the South Africa’s Financial Intelligence Centre (SA-FIC), the Namibian Financial Intelligence Centre (Nam–FIC) and the Namibian Prosecutor–General. 

The work saw a court order being issued on 30 December last year to have the accounts seized.

The legal troubles of the Jordaans started last year when the National Prosecution Authority’s Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) in Mpumalanga, in collaboration with a special illegal mining unit in the South African Police Service (the SAPS), obtained a provisional preservation of property order in the Mbombela High Court. 

Amongst others, the order allowed for the farm, stockpiles of coal in two separate areas, heavy-duty mining machinery (yellow machines), equipment and motor vehicles (heavy-duty trucks), as well as the washing plant machinery and all movable buildings, machines, equipment and motor vehicles used at Droog Valley farm Barrel Coal Processing and Washing Plant near Carolina, Mpumalanga area, to be seized.

The assets were seized on the basis that there were reasonable grounds to believe that they were used as instrumentalities to commit various illegal large-scale coal mining and environmental offences at the farm.

Moreover, there were reasonable grounds to believe that the assets were the proceeds of unlawful activities, namely the large-scale illegal coal mining and environmental offences. 

It was the largest seizure of its kind ever in South Africa.