Property entrepreneur Niki Vontas starts the new year under fire from a number of directions and his plans for three listed property companies, Bonatla, Fairvest and Gold Edge, look shaky.

But this veteran of 15 property fund listings over 18 years has been there before and is undeterred.

First Bonatla has reported an unexpected loss of 1,28c/share for the year to September after EPS of 4,15c last year. Its share price is languishing at 45c/share, a steep discount to its net asset value (NAV) of 110c. Then Fairvest said it was distributing 9,1c for the year to September, far below its listing forecast a year ago. Its counter is trading at 57c, down from its listing price last November of 150c.

Investors sifting through a mixture of laconic and rambling cautionaries and opaque result announcements on Sens - mainly explaining Vontas's problems - won't find them particularly helpful. Vontas, naturally, believes investors should concentrate on his strategy instead.

At first glance his plans seem simple. Vontas aims to sell the non strategic (read not so good) properties of Bonatla and Fairvest into Gold Edge. He wants to turn that group into another ApexHi - the fund of high-risk properties - into which other funds can sell their poorly located properties. Then he will sell Bonatla's remaining properties into Fairvest, which will become a R1bn-plus fund. 'Bonatla's shareholders will then get NAV instead of market capitalisation.'

But there are complications ahead, of which the biggest seems to be the Fairvest put options granted to shareholders in Glocash, the company that became Fairvest in 2001, as an incentive to stay in the new group when Vontas took over.

Vontas claims the puts total R9m but others say they could reach as much as R30m. The sum settled on will in effect become a debt that Vontas and Fairvest must settle jointly. But when the option date arrived on November 30, Fairvest's share price was then trading at a discount to the put price of between 60% and 63% and Fairvest was inundated with puts.

On December 10, a group statement issued on Sens saying that unit holders exercised many more units than could have been subject to the option. If the original option holders have traded their shares, new investors are not entitled to exercise the options, claims Vontas. Maybe. But this battle isn't over yet.

The cautionary added that the 'process was worsened by a purported offer to buy 51% of the issued units, incorrectly alleged to originate from a consortium headed by CEO Niki Vontas, that was disseminated incorrectly to a third party'.

Some Fairvest shareholders are asking whether their deal with Vontas was such a good idea after all. It certainly seemed so for Vontas. He was issued about 16,7m shares in Fairvest at 2c each. Having plunged from its listing price of 150c, the share trades at 60c, which still gives him a R10m profit. Vontas was also paid restraint of trade compensation.

Shareholders also question what appears to be a pattern of Vontas issuing himself large tranches of shares as payment for restraint-of-trade agreements and for management companies, among other things. (In Bonatla, for example, it was R25m for restraint of trade and R22m for his management company.)

He also regularly interposes himself between property vendors and his company - between himself and Fairvest, for instance. At Fairvest's listing, Daisy Street 172 (Pty) bought the properties from the vendors, and the shares and loan account in Daisy 172 were bought from Vontas. It is not known what, if any, profit he made on the transaction, but an acquisition commission of R20m was paid for assembling the portfolio. The November 13 announcement was for 44 properties valued at R420m, bought by acquiring the shares and loan accounts in Daisy Street Investment 127.

The announcement stated Daisy Street Investments 165 (representative: Vontas) had offered to buy properties from Fairvest for R77m. At the same time, Gold Edge has issued cautionaries. Vontas confirms the two are linked; Gold Edge is likely to acquire the Daisy 165 and its Fairvest properties through Vontas.

Vontas sold his management company to Bonatla for R22m, a questionable purchase since the management was subsequently outsourced. Then he was paid a restraint of trade. He repeated this with Fairvest.

Vontas acknowledges many of these deals but retorts that his critics are missing one important point: 'I always take the risk. If I interpose at no risk to myself between vendors and the company, it is theft, fraud.'

For instance, he sold his management company VLC into Bonatla for 11m shares (ultimately worth R13m). 'Then I borrowed R13m from BoE and lent it to Bonatla,' he says, but this has not been verified by Bonatla. He claims much the same thing with the shares paid for his restraint of trade. That enabled the company to buy two large property portfolios. 'If the sale of properties to Daisy 127 doesn't go ahead, I carry substantial cancellation penalties instead of the company.'

He has not been paid as Fairvest CEO, he says. 'I'm in these groups for the long term. Most of my shares are pledged to banks for money I put in the companies and I'm now under enormous financial pressure,' he says. 'Do you think my shareholders would have followed me through 15 listings if I was profiteering?'

One shareholder, Sanlam Asset Management, confirms this. 'As disclosed to us, we are satisfied he has earned his money on a market-related, risk-reward basis,' says GM Hugo Mocke.

Vontas expects to finalise his plans early 2003. He can be sure that shareholders will watch with interest.