One investor says: "I put $800 million into Tannenbaum's scheme."

Tannenbaum, who moved to Sydney in 2007, said in a statement on June 13 there is “no proof that I have committed fraud.”

SHOOT: That's quite a chunk of change. How do you get money like that to disappear?

clipped from www.bloomberg.com July 1 (Bloomberg) -- South African government investigators have so far discovered 2 billion rand ($258 million) worth of investment in an alleged Ponzi scheme run by Barry Tannenbaum, the country’s finance minister said. “Current indications are that the scheme amounts to approximately 2 billion rand,” Pravin Gordhan, the minister, told lawmakers in Cape Town today, adding that there have been media reports of losses of between 5 billion rand and 18 billion rand. Tannenbaum has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. Adrian Lackay, a spokesman for a task force set up by the government to investigate Tannenbaum, said the minister’s figure is a measure of the cash that the force has found that investors gave to Tannenbaum and his associates and does not include the returns they made and the interest they were promised. Private investigators say one investor alone claims to have put $800 million into the scheme.