Profitnet is a fraudulent business development programme is run by Shaun Gannon of CENTRIM, Brighton University, and Robert Taylor of the Leadership Centre, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

I represent the members of ProfitNet South Africa 2009 who were deceived and ripped off by these frauds.

We are posting this to warn other businesses, both in South Africa and elsewhere in the world, that we were lied to, deceived and conned by the directors named above. They received a 60 000 pound grant from the British Council to run ProfitNet in South Africa in 2009. To our knowledge, we were the only members of the programme. We did not see a penny of the British Council's money and none of the promises they made to us about the development of our businesses, the great speakers they would organise, the venue, the equipment, the partnerships with firms in the UK turned out to be lies. The project manager and the facilitators of the groups worked for a year and never received their salaries and the operating costs, which were paid by the staff in the belief that they would be refunded from the ProfitNet grant, have still not been paid. Over 1000 pounds worth of receipts that were given to Professor Robert Taylor to be refunded have "disappeared". We think he has submitted them to claim the refund for himself. Profitnet's directors, Gannon and Taylor, failed to pay their suppliers and service providers and the whole thing was fraudulent.

 We don't know where the British Council's money has gone and all we can report is that it was not used for the purposes for which it was awarded. We can only assume that the directors paid it to themselves - for services NOT rendered!

 Please, please please be careful if you are ever approached to join a ProfitNet group, or if someone tries to sell you a licence to run the programme wherever  you are based. These men treated us with absolute contempt and disrespect and from what we can see they have no ethics or integrity whatsoever. Do not put yourself in the situation where they can do the same to you.

 Please see our website www.profitnetsa.co.za for more information