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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