Andrew Eaton, the senior South African promoter who has followed Josip Heit through Karatbars International, GSPartners and now the Apertum Foundation, delivered the news to investors himself. Victims outside the North American settling jurisdictions would not be receiving refunds. Not delayed refunds. None.
The reasoning attributed to him is the part worth recording. Eaton, who had been in contact with Heit and other Apertum insiders at the Foundation’s Hong Kong event in June 2026, told investors that if Apertum Foundation paid the refunds, everything closes down.
What Had Been Promised
The context makes the statement worse rather than better. Refunds to non-North American victims had originally been pitched as a path forward for the people the September 2024 settlement did not cover. That settlement bound Heit and the GSB entities to repay investors in the settling North American states, districts and provinces. It did nothing for investors anywhere else, and GSPartners had claimed by its own account to have taken money from more than 800,000 people worldwide.
Those investors were told, in effect, to wait for a separate arrangement. USDT refunds were floated. Two years passed. Then, days after the Hong Kong event, the answer arrived through a promoter on a webinar rather than through the company: there would be no refunds, because paying them would end the business.
The Admission Inside the Excuse
Read plainly, the explanation concedes something significant. An operation that cannot return investor money without collapsing is an operation whose continued existence depends on not returning it. That is not a liquidity problem of the kind a functioning business has. It is a statement that the money required to make investors whole is not available and cannot be found from operations.
It also inverts the relationship investors thought they had. They were told they were funding a trading and mining operation that generated returns. The explanation for why they cannot be repaid is that repaying them would close that operation down.
Eaton’s Position in the Structure
Eaton has never been named as a respondent in any regulatory order located in the course of this reporting, unlike Bruce Innes Wylde Hughes, Dirc Zahlmann, Aline Lima and Dennis Loos, all of whom appear in official state securities filings. His role is documented in specialist reporting, which places him as the head of a cohort of South African promoters running back to the Karatbars era, and which records his attendance at the June 2026 Apertum event in Hong Kong.
That distinction matters and is stated here deliberately. What is attributed to Eaton is a communication to investors, not a regulatory finding. But the communication itself is the story. The person telling thousands of people they will not get their money back is not a company officer issuing a statement. It is a promoter on a webinar, relaying what he was told at an event in Hong Kong.
What the Settlement Actually Covered
The geography of the September 2024 settlement is the reason two classes of victim exist. It was reached with state and provincial securities regulators in North America, and its refund obligation ran only to investors in the settling jurisdictions. The terms announced by NASAA bound Heit and the GSB entities to repay those investors through an independent administrator. Everyone else was outside it.
GSPartners had claimed by its own account to have raised around a billion dollars from more than 800,000 investors globally. The majority were believed to be North American, which leaves a very large number who were not. Those investors watched a settlement resolve the securities allegations against Heit in the United States and Canada while giving them nothing, and were then told to wait for a separate arrangement.
Even inside the settlement the position is not good. Claims closed in May 2025 and the administrator disclosed in September 2026 that determinations had not begun. The difference is that North American investors still have a live mechanism and a regulator filing status reports. Everyone else now has an answer.
The Promoter as Messenger
There is a structural point in who delivered the news. A company that owes money to investors and cannot pay ordinarily communicates that through counsel, a filing or a formal notice, because the statement has consequences. Here the message reached investors through a promoter on a webinar, relaying what he had been told at an event in Hong Kong.
That arrangement carries an advantage for the operator. A promoter’s statement is not a corporate communication. It creates no document, admits nothing on the record, and can be disowned. The people it reaches are the ones who need to hear it, and the people who might act on it in a legal forum receive nothing they can file.
Eaton has never been named as a respondent in any regulatory order located in this reporting, unlike Hughes, Zahlmann, Lima and Loos, all of whom appear in official state securities filings. What is attributed to him is a communication to investors, not a regulatory finding, and it is recorded here on that basis.
Conclusion
Investors outside North America were kept waiting two years on the prospect of USDT refunds that were never going to arrive. The answer, when it came, came from a promoter rather than the company, days after he had been with Heit and other insiders in Hong Kong. The reason given was that paying refunds would close everything down. Every investor still holding a position in Apertum should read that sentence twice, because it describes the business they are in.
