A host of companies linked to the controversial Gupta brothers received a total of over 49 billion rands in irregular payments, a witness has claimed at the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture
A host of companies linked to the controversial Gupta brothers received a total of over 49 billion rands in irregular payments from a number of parastatal corporations, a witness has claimed at the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture.
Ajay, Atul, and Rajesh Gupta have been accused of siphoning billions of rands from state-owned corporations through their alleged closeness to former South African president Jacob Zuma.
Paul Edward Holden, a researcher with the London-based Shadow World Investigations, explained that hundreds of financial transactions and bank statements were studied to arrive at detailed conclusions about the sources of funds and the companies used in the money laundering that are listed in the report.
Among the companies listed as having received irregular payments from state-owned enterprises is Neotel, in which Tata Communications held a majority interest until it sold its stake to Liquid Telecom in 2016.
The report says Neotel received over 5.6 billion rands for what was called network services and CCTV installations from the national rail network operator Transnet, which is currently in disarray with many railway stations nationwide stripped bare by vandalism.
Transnet also paid about 42 billion rands to Regiment's Capital, a company run by Salim Essa, a close associate of the Guptas, and another billion rands to Trillian, where Essa also had a stake.
The Free State provincial government, including the Office of the Premier and several other departments, featured prominently in the list of money allegedly laundered between companies linked to the Gupta family to eventually end up in the account of Gateway Limited, the Gupta enterprise in Dubai.
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