Toy story: Inside the Hamleys heist
The fun and games at Hamleys in SA took a dark turn when its founder, Philip Paphitis, stole about R20m from the business and later shot himself. Now new owners believe they can make a success of it
Some time in late December 2018, security cameras picked up Hamleys SA founder Philip Paphitis pushing a shopping trolley into his company offices, on the 12th floor of Joburg’s Bedford Centre, in the middle of the night. On entry, he switched off the cameras and, with that, disappeared from sight — along with R20m from the toy company’s coffers.
"Perhaps it was foresight, perhaps not, but in December 2018, Paphitis set about a new plan extricating himself from the business in a most unconventional manner," business rescue practitioner Stefan Steyn says in his papers on the company, narrating the sequence of events...
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