President Cyril Ramaphosa could soon be calling his counterparts in Dubai and India for help to get the Gupta family and their lieutenants behind bars.
So frustrated are prosecutors at the slow process of submitting their requests for mutual legal assistance from those governments that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is now considering asking Ramaphosa to directly engage Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi to seek their intervention.
City Press has also learnt that:
- The two state capture cases now before court – the Estina matter, involving the alleged looting of R250m from the Free State department of agriculture through the Vrede dairy farm project; and the corruption case against Duduzane Zuma for his role in the Guptas' alleged R600m bribe offer to former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas – are in shambles. Prosecutors are now said to be blaming former National Director of Public Prosecutions Shaun Abrahams for pushing them to bring the cases to court before they were ready;
- Officials from the NPA, the Hawks and the Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) held two meetings with evidence leaders from the commission of inquiry into state capture, headed by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, who suggested they take the lead in the inquiry because they have much better investigative and forensic capacity than the Hawks do;
- After the commission provides the NPA with its report – which could take more than two years – prosecutors would then decide what action to take.
This means that it could be years before any alleged role-players in state capture, including the Gupta brothers, former Transnet and Eskom chief executive Brian Molefe, his chief financial officer Anoj Singh, and Gupta lieutenant Salim Essa – who have been identified in a number of forensic reports – ever see the inside of a court room; and
- While the terms of reference of the commission do not allow for evidence gathered there to be used in criminal cases, the AFU will be represented and will launch civil applications to preserve the assets of alleged wrongdoers as and when that evidence becomes available.
The commission of inquiry into state capture began this week. Friday saw explosive testimony from Jonas, who told the commission that one Gupta brother had claimed they were "in control of everything; we are in control of the NPA, we are in control of the Hawks, we are in control of national intelligence. So, we are in full control and the old man [former president Jacob Zuma] will do everything that we tell him to do".
Embarrassing
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the NPA narrowly averted an embarrassing failure in the commercial crimes court in Bloemfontein when the court took some convincing to allow for the case against the Estina accused to be postponed to December 4.
Prosecutor Justice Bakamela asked for a three- to six-month postponement to allow for further investigation and the finalisation of the mutual legal assistance applications.
He presented the court with a letter from the department of justice, confirming it was in the process of finalising the applications with authorities in Dubai and India.
However, two senior prosecutors told City Press that the NPA had compiled three such applications for assistance for that particular case, but only one had left the country – despite the fact that the accused appeared in court in February and the Hawks have been investigating the case for almost a year.
The only application sent so far has been to India.
One senior prosecutor said they had requested information from both countries, including details of bank accounts held by the "Guptas and their associates", bank statements and a detailed list of transactions for forensic analysis.
They also asked for the police in both countries to obtain statements from members of the family, as well as their lieutenants and any other witnesses in both Dubai and India, on their behalf.
"In the case of the two applications that have to be sent to Dubai, we are still in the process of getting the requests to be translated into Arabic. It is a tedious process," said one prosecutor privy to the details.
"After the requests have been completed, it has to be sent to the justice department – and after it has been interrogated, it is then forwarded to the department of international relations and cooperation before it can be forwarded to the identified country.
