A high-powered delegation of Dutch justice officials arrived in Cape Town this week to grill two local businessmen accused of fraud in the Netherlands involving at least R600-million.
Sean Stockdale, a Milnerton property developer, and Craig Garrett, a Somerset West businessman, had also been facing extradition for allegedly running a fake wine quota investment scheme in Holland in the 1990s before returning to South Africa.
The men's advocate, William King, confirmed that an extradition process had been withdrawn by the Dutch prosecutors.
Reliable sources said the extradition process could be reinstated at a later stage.
The men appeared in the Cape Town Magistrate's Court on Monday and Tuesday.
King reiterated that in Cape Town they had been summonsed only as "witnesses in an inquiry", not as suspects and that they were giving their full co-operation.
Dutch prosecutors allege the two had attracted investors - including 3 300 US professionals, mostly doctors and dentists - into buying non-existent wine investment portfolios.
But during questioning this week, Stockdale and Garret were adamant that they had been made scapegoats by their employers, the actual perpetrators and were "100% innocent".
Garrett, a former national squad hockey player in South Africa, said after he had dropped out of the University of Stellenbosch with a huge unpaid study loan in 1993, he had accepted a job offer as a call centre salesperson overseas.
Stockdale, a former barman, said he had joined the same group, also as a "telesales" person in 1996.
Both men said they quickly rose through the ranks and were made directors after a relatively short time. However, they were really only office managers and had no executive powers.
Stockdale said he was a pawn in the hands of his bosses and had not been aware that the wine they sold had not existed.
But Jeichien de Graaff of the Dutch prosecution office earlier said Stockdale and Garrett were the main suspects in a "big fraud case" involving "non-existent wine investments sold to American people".
De Graaff said the two were suspects in a major "boiler room fraud", in which "clients or victims are constantly phoned and put under huge pressure to buy, buy, buy and not waste opportunities".
"They (the investors) initially do gain a little on their investment, although only on paper. They then invest more.
"Our investigators calculate that in the region of R1.1bn passed through the accounts of Oceans International Marketing (of which the two were directors) between 1996 and 2003."
De Graaff said the two had been sought to stand trial in her country but the case had proceeded without them after they could not be found. She would not elaborate about the extradition process.
Ocean International allegedly had a branch at Milnerton Lagoon, where Stockdale still has an office. But Stockdale testified that after he returned to South Africa in 2000 he ran a telesales outfit from his Milnerton Lagoon office which also sold "physical" wine to US people.
When the story first surfaced in SA the previous year Stockdale said the Dutch justice system had "prejudged me as a criminal".
In 2003 alleged victims of the scheme successfully challenged their activities in civil courts in the Cayman Islands, the US, Scotland and the Channel Islands.