John Ngcebetsha, the South African lawyer representing the claimants, said yesterday a class action suit was expected to be filed in the New York State Court against the companies, which included giant South African finance group Alexander Forbes.
"The claims will be filed on behalf of ex-workers who deposited money into pension, health, life, unemployment and retirement funds, and never received a cent back from these companies," Ngcebetsha said.
"Some of these workers have been waiting for more than ten years, many of them without jobs," he said.
According to papers to be lodged before the court, other companies listed in the lawsuit include the Union Carbide corporation and the Dow Chemical company.
The companies are accused of defrauding workers of billions of dollars.
The suit was filed against "the plaintiff facilities in and around the Republic of South Africa who deposited billions of dollars in pension, health, life unemployment and retirement funds, which were later negligently, carelessly or recklessly unaccounted for, improperly transferred, withheld, lost or stolen".
In May, a group called the Apartheid Claims Task Force announced plans to file a lawsuit worth billions of dollars in New York against South African gold mining company Gold Fields for making blacks work under "sub-human" conditions during the apartheid regime.
Fagan has also filed or announced plans to file other suits against Swiss and US banks, pharmaceutical conglomerates, car manufacturers, food giant Nestle and mining companies De Beers and Anglo American, among others, on the grounds that they allegedly benefitted under the apartheid regime.
Ngcebetsha said today's lawsuit represented a new claim, and was unrelated to the claims already filed by Fagan, who spearheaded a successful claim against Swiss banks on behalf of Holocaust victims.
"This is a new class action. We don't have the names of all the victims yet, but we hope that more would come along as time goes on," he said.
President Thabo Mbeki has said in the past the South African government did not support the apartheid claims, as many of the companies where now helping with South Africa's development. – Sapa-AFP.
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