The South African brothers obtained investment citizenship before Africrypt collapsed and later used Vanuatu passports internationally. Still, the famous multibillion-dollar loss estimate was erroneous, and the passports did not make them invisible to law enforcement.
WASHINGTON, D.C., September 12, 2026: Raees and Ameer Cajee became internationally notorious in 2021 after their South African cryptocurrency platform, Africrypt, collapsed and lawyers representing investors alleged that approximately $3.6 billion in Bitcoin had disappeared with the brothers.
The dramatic figure generated global headlines describing Africrypt as one of history’s largest cryptocurrency thefts. At the same time, subsequent reporting revealed that both brothers had acquired Vanuatu citizenship before announcing that the platform’s wallets had been compromised.
Later financial reviews, liquidation proceedings, travel records, and law-enforcement disclosures substantially changed that narrative because the $3.6 billion estimate was never verified, the brothers faced no arrest restrictions when they left South Africa, and one was subsequently detained in Switzerland.
The more accurate account is that the Vanuatu passports provided valuable international mobility after the collapse. Still, no evidence shows the documents defeated South African border controls, prevented arrest, or granted either brother immunity from criminal and civil proceedings.
Africrypt’s Rise Before the Collapse
Raees and Ameer Cajee established Africrypt in 2019, presenting themselves as unusually successful young cryptocurrency entrepreneurs who could generate exceptional returns through proprietary trading algorithms, artificial intelligence, market arbitrage, and active management of pooled digital assets.
Clients reportedly deposited South African rand, Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies with the platform after receiving promises of substantial monthly returns. However, Africrypt did not provide the audited financial statements, independent custody arrangements, or transparent wallet segregation normally expected from a conventional investment manager.
The brothers retained extensive control over the platform’s internal systems, investor balances, administrative accounts, and cryptocurrency wallets, creating a centralized structure in which clients depended heavily upon information displayed through Africrypt’s own interface.
Later, investors and forensic specialists alleged that displayed balances could not always be reconciled with independently verifiable blockchain holdings. However, the brothers have maintained that Africrypt operated legitimately until an external security breach compromised its systems.
The April 2021 Hack Announcement
On April 13, 2021, Ameer Cajee sent investors a notice stating that Africrypt’s system, client accounts, wallets, and nodes had been compromised, forcing the company to suspend operations while attempting to recover the missing assets.
The communication warned that investors engaging lawyers or reporting the matter to authorities could delay the recovery process, wording that immediately generated suspicion among clients who believed independent investigators should have been contacted as quickly as possible.
Africrypt’s website subsequently became inaccessible, its known telephone numbers stopped functioning, employees reportedly lost access to company systems, and its physical offices were emptied. At the same time, investors attempted to determine where their cryptocurrency had gone.
A group of investors launched liquidation proceedings on April 19, and the Gauteng High Court granted a provisional liquidation order against Africrypt on April 26, only thirteen days after the company announced the alleged breach.
The Cajee brothers departed South Africa within weeks of the notice, although publicly available travel information has not established their exact departure date, the passport presented to South African immigration officials, or whether any legal restriction prohibited them from leaving.
The $3.6 Billion Figure Was Grossly Misleading.
The most important factual correction concerns the assertion that the brothers disappeared with approximately $3.6 billion because investigators never established that Africrypt controlled Bitcoin worth anything close to that amount.
The initial estimate linked the figure to approximately 69,000 Bitcoin supposedly held in a wallet attributed to Africrypt. Still, later analysis concluded that the wallet had been incorrectly associated with the company and was connected to the South African cryptocurrency exchange Luno.
Lawyers representing investors told international media that $3.6 billion appeared to have vanished. Still, they did not publicly provide a complete accounting showing that clients had deposited that amount or that Africrypt legally controlled the wallet underlying the calculation.
Raees Cajee disputed the figure immediately, saying that Africrypt had managed approximately $200 million at its highest point and that no more than about $5 million had disappeared during the alleged security breach.
Investor claims, regulatory estimates, blockchain examinations, and subsequent journalism produced substantially different figures, ranging from slightly more than R200 million in deposited funds to approximately R3.6 billion in claimed cryptocurrency value.
The Financial Sector Conduct Authority estimated in July 2021 that losses exceeded R200 million and that Africrypt appeared to have obtained money from several hundred people, not the multibillion-dollar amount initially circulated internationally.
A later investigation calculated potential losses at approximately R3.6 billion, a figure denominated in South African rand rather than United States dollars and therefore representing only a fraction of the original headline claim.
Other reporting placed the amount closer to $40 million or $50 million. At the same time, lawyers and liquidators acknowledged that calculations varied depending upon whether claims were measured using original deposits, cryptocurrency values at collapse, or later market prices.
No final criminal Judgment has determined precisely how much was stolen, whether the entire loss resulted from fraud, or whether an external hacking event accounted for any part of the missing cryptocurrency.
The responsible description is therefore that Africrypt investors lost cryptocurrency and money potentially worth hundreds of millions or several billion South African rand. At the same time, the famous $3.6 billion United States dollar estimate was unsupported.
The Vanuatu Citizenship Timeline
Documents examined during The Guardian’s investigation into Vanuatu’s passport program showed that Raees Cajee purchased Vanuatu citizenship in October 2020, approximately six months before Africrypt announced the alleged hack.
Ameer Cajee obtained his Vanuatu citizenship in January 2021, approximately three months before the platform collapsed and before investors, South African regulators, or law-enforcement agencies had publicly accused either brother of criminal activity.
The citizenships were reportedly acquired through Vanuatu’s Development Support Program, which granted qualifying applicants’ citizenship after a contribution of about $130,000, without requiring extended residence or substantial physical presence in the Pacific country.
At the time of approval, Vanuatu passports provided visa-free short-term entry to the United Kingdom, the European Union’s Schengen Area, and numerous other jurisdictions, making them especially attractive to cryptocurrency entrepreneurs operating internationally.
Because the Africrypt allegations emerged after both approvals, the available evidence does not prove that Vanuatu knowingly granted citizenship to individuals already wanted for fraud or subject to outstanding arrest warrants.
The timing nevertheless raises legitimate source-of-wealth and due-diligence questions because the applicants were extremely young, claimed significant cryptocurrency wealth, and reportedly pursued the applications rapidly while operating a largely unregulated investment platform.
What the Passports Actually Accomplished
Later forensic reporting based upon travel records and whistleblower information indicated that both brothers used Vanuatu passports during international travel after leaving South Africa, including journeys involving the United Kingdom, Dubai, Turkey, and Switzerland.
This evidence supports the narrower conclusion that the passports expanded their mobility after Africrypt collapsed, especially when international attention attached their South African identities to allegations concerning the missing cryptocurrency.
It does not establish that they presented Vanuatu passports when departing South Africa, concealed their identities from immigration officials, or crossed the border despite a valid court order prohibiting their departure.
South African law generally requires citizens with multiple nationalities to use South African passports when entering or leaving the country. Still, no published border record conclusively identifies which documents the brothers presented when they left in 2021.
More importantly, no public evidence shows that South African authorities had entered arrest alerts, confiscated their passports, secured warrants, or imposed departure restrictions before the brothers left within weeks of the April announcement.
The brothers may therefore have departed because government agencies did not act quickly enough, rather than because Vanuatu citizenship technically defeated an established South African border-control measure.
A legally issued second passport can provide additional mobility, residence options, consular support, and alternative visa access. Still, it does not erase the holder’s original citizenship, biometrics, financial records, or legal obligations.
The Brothers’ International Route
Investigative reporting reconstructed a route that placed the brothers in the United Kingdom, Dubai, Turkey, Tanzania, and Switzerland during different stages following Africrypt’s collapse. However, individual accounts sometimes differed regarding the precise order and timing.
Raees Cajee submitted legal documents from Tanzania opposing Africrypt’s final liquidation, showing he was not completely untraceable even when his physical movements remained uncertain to investors and journalists.
The brothers maintained that they had left South Africa because they and their family received death threats from organized criminal groups following the alleged hack, rather than because they intended to escape prosecution.
Their lawyers said they were prepared to cooperate with legitimate investigations and intended to provide evidence demonstrating that Africrypt had been attacked. However, the company’s liquidation representatives accused its directors of failing to cooperate fully.
These competing accounts have never been resolved in a final criminal trial, so it is inappropriate to describe the brothers as convicted thieves or to state conclusively that they personally transferred every missing asset.
The Swiss Arrest Contradicts the Perfect-Escape Narrative
The claim that Vanuatu citizenship allowed the brothers to evade law enforcement successfully is further undermined by the arrest of Ameer Cajee in Zurich on November 9, 2021.
Swiss authorities reportedly detained Ameer while he was accessing safe-deposit facilities containing hardware wallets, after which prosecutors seized assets associated with the broader investigation and held him in pretrial detention for approximately six months.
He was released in May 2022 subject to conditions that reportedly included a security deposit of 300,000 Swiss francs, residence at a designated location, surrender or freezing of his South African and Vanuatu passports, and a prohibition against leaving Switzerland.
The Swiss travel restrictions were extended more than once. They remained in effect until February 2023, showing that possession of Vanuatu citizenship did not prevent detention, seizure of travel documents, supervised release, or judicial control over his movements.
Swiss prosecutors later confirmed an investigation into both brothers on suspicion of money laundering, emphasizing that the presumption of innocence would apply until any legally binding conclusion was reached.
As of August 2026, public reporting continued to describe the Swiss investigation as open, although no final Swiss conviction of either brother had been announced.
A Second Vanuatu Passport Raised New Questions
Forensic records reviewed by journalists indicated that Ameer obtained another Vanuatu passport in March 2022, despite his original passport reportedly remaining valid until 2031 and while Swiss restrictions controlled his travel.
The second document was reportedly issued using the name “Ameer J Cajee” through a Dubai intermediary. However, publicly available evidence does not establish that he used it to violate the Swiss travel prohibition.
Ameer denied wrongdoing involving the issuance or use of his passports and described allegations that the documents were unlawfully obtained or used to obscure his movements as speculative and misleading.
The circumstances nevertheless create serious due-diligence questions because issuing an additional passport to a citizen facing an active foreign investigation can complicate efforts to identify every valid travel document subject to a court order.
Swiss courts retained control over Ameer’s movements until the restrictions expired, and his passports were eventually returned before he reportedly left Switzerland during August or September 2023.
Why South African Enforcement Stalled
When Africrypt collapsed, South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority faced a substantial jurisdictional problem because cryptocurrency assets had not yet been legally designated as financial products subject to its full regulatory authority.
The regulator could examine whether Africrypt had provided regulated financial advice or intermediary services. Still, it could not simply treat every cryptocurrency transaction as activity falling within the existing financial-services framework.
South African police and the Hawks received reports concerning Africrypt, yet later reporting indicated that domestic investigations and criminal cases were eventually closed without charges against the brothers.
Reasons included uncertain loss calculations, disputed evidence, settlements with creditors, limited regulatory authority, complicated blockchain tracing, international movement of assets, and difficulty obtaining consistent cooperation from affected investors.
The absence of South African charges does not prove that Africrypt suffered a genuine external hack. It also prevents describing the brothers as fugitives from a completed prosecution or outstanding South African conviction.
No documented extradition contest shows Vanuatu refused to surrender its citizens, no published Interpol Red Notice is conclusively linked to the brothers, and no court ruling found that their investment citizenship protected them from South African justice.
The circumstances differ considerably from a conventional extradition case, where a requesting government has filed charges, secured a judicial warrant, located the accused abroad, and submitted a formal surrender request under applicable law.
Understanding the difference between suspicion, an international police alert, arrest, and extradition is essential because each stage requires separate legal authority and cannot be replaced by media descriptions of someone as a fugitive.
Investors Received a Partial Settlement
In late 2021, a foreign company called Pennython Project Management offered to buy back or settle investor claims, with payments reportedly calculated at about 65 cents for every rand originally deposited.
Approximately 95 percent of participating claimants reportedly accepted the arrangement. However, investors who had deposited Bitcoin complained that compensation based upon historical rand values represented only a small fraction of the cryptocurrency’s later market price.
Some creditors and investigators questioned whether the settlement money was indirectly connected to the Cajees, but those suspicions were not established through a final public Judgment.
Earlier versions of the proposed arrangement reportedly required accepting creditors to withdraw criminal complaints, raising concerns that financial settlements could reduce the number of cooperating complainants and weaken prosecution prospects.
The settlement helped compensate many investors, but it did not establish whether the original hack occurred, identify the ultimate source of the recovery funds, or determine criminal responsibility for Africrypt’s collapse.
The Brothers Returned to South Africa
By February 2026, investigative reporting placed Raees and Ameer Cajee back in South Africa, including at the secured Zimbali Estate in KwaZulu-Natal and at locations connected to Johannesburg and Umhlanga.
Journalists and lawyers reported difficulty approaching or serving them because of private security and uncertain residential arrangements. Still, their reported presence inside South Africa fundamentally contradicted the earlier narrative that Vanuatu citizenship had enabled a permanent disappearance.
South African government sources reportedly said that no domestic criminal investigation was currently active against the brothers, meaning their return did not automatically expose them to arrest in the Africrypt matter.
Their presence also shows that the Vanuatu passports functioned as travel documents rather than irreversible escape mechanisms, as the brothers eventually returned to the country whose investors accused them of wrongdoing.
A New R300 Million Claim Emerged in 2026
In August 2026, a Dubai-based businessman brought a new claim in the Johannesburg High Court seeking approximately R300 million from Raees, Ameer, and a third brother over cryptocurrency and cash allegedly entrusted to them after Africrypt’s collapse.
The claimant alleged that he transferred approximately $2.5 million in digital assets and another $2.07 million in cash after the brothers persuaded him that Africrypt had suffered a genuine cyberattack.
His damages calculation sought approximately $18.4 million after applying later Bitcoin appreciation, although the Cajees’ lawyers argued that the pleading was vague, legally defective, and potentially sought double recovery.
The brothers are defending the proceeding, and no court has yet determined that they stole the claimant’s funds, breached the alleged agreement, or owe the requested damages.
This new civil dispute is separate from the Africrypt liquidation, the Swiss money-laundering investigation, and the original allegations advanced by South African platform investors.
Vanuatu Has Not Publicly Revoked Their Citizenship
No reliable public record found through August 31, 2026, establishes that Vanuatu revoked the brothers’ citizenship or canceled every passport issued to them.
Vanuatu officials previously said citizenship could be reconsidered if substantial foreign convictions emerged, but allegations, investigations, liquidation proceedings, and disputed civil claims do not automatically amount to qualifying convictions.
The continuing absence of a final criminal conviction therefore appears to have limited the available foundation for revocation. However, Vanuatu has not publicly explained the status of the Cajees’ individual citizenship files.
The passports have nevertheless lost important travel benefits because the United Kingdom imposed visa requirements on Vanuatu nationals in 2023 and the European Union permanently ended Vanuatu’s visa exemption in December 2024.
Those decisions followed concerns that the investment program’s rapid processing, low rejection rate, limited residence requirements, and inadequate information sharing created security and migration risks for other countries.
The United States Treasury has similarly warned that citizenship-by-investment programs can create risks involving money laundering, corruption, sanctions evasion, and misuse by politically exposed or criminally connected applicants.
The Corrected Outcome
Raees and Ameer Cajee purchased Vanuatu citizenship shortly before Africrypt collapsed, departed South Africa before authorities imposed any publicly documented travel restrictions, and later used their Vanuatu passports during extensive international travel.
The documents increased their mobility and initially gave them visa-free access to key destinations. Still, they did not make the brothers anonymous, erase their South African identities, prevent forensic tracking, or stop Swiss authorities from arresting Ameer.
The $3.6 billion figure should not be repeated as an established loss because it resulted from a misidentified wallet and greatly exceeded the amounts supported by regulatory estimates, liquidation claims, and later blockchain analysis.
It is also inaccurate to say the brothers successfully evaded all law enforcement because Ameer spent about six months in Swiss pretrial detention, remained subject to extended travel restrictions, and surrendered control of his passports.
No public evidence demonstrates that Vanuatu documents deceived South African border officers, that an arrest alert failed because the brothers presented alternate passports, or that Vanuatu rejected a formal South African extradition request.
The stronger and more defensible conclusion is that regulatory delay, disputed loss calculations, creditor settlements, jurisdictional gaps, and the absence of timely criminal charges mattered more than the passports when the brothers left South Africa.
Their Vanuatu citizenship provided a valuable tool for international mobility at the time. Still, it was only one component of a much broader case involving cryptocurrency opacity, fragmented enforcement, private settlements, international investigations, and unresolved allegations.
As of August 31, 2026, the brothers remained unconvicted in connection with Africrypt, reportedly lived again in South Africa, faced a contested civil claim in Johannesburg, and remained connected to an open Swiss money-laundering investigation under the continuing presumption of innocence.