Denel board member and adviser to Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba‚ Thamsanqa Msomi‚ has emerged as the fixer for Gupta-family associates in the Department of Home Affairs‚ documents show. A leaked e-mail trail shows how the Gupta’s man on the inside received e-mails from the family’s associates, asking for assistance for visas for "clients"‚ confirming long-standing speculation over his alleged links to the family. Msomi was Gigaba’s chief of staff while he was public enterprises minister‚ later becoming his legal adviser while Gigaba was home affairs minister, and was then appointed to the board of Denel in 2015. Msomi does not deny the picture painted in the e-mails but says his actions were not out of the ordinary. In interviews on Tuesday, it was established that when Msomi was at the Department of Home Affairs, he instructed junior officials to assist Gupta-owned Sahara CEO Ashu Chawla to do the Guptas’ bidding. The leaked e-mail trail showed how a director in the department was...
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