Uncapturing a state
Ajay Gupta is on the run and some of his key lieutenants have been arrested. Now it seems prosecutors are looking to cut a deal with consulting company McKinsey. Will the cases stick?
Less than 24 hours after the ANC recalled Jacob Zuma as president of the country, a dozen Hawks officers descended on the Gupta family’s Saxonwold compound. It was 6.45am. As residents, journalists and curious joggers thronged the entrance of the family’s mansion, officers arrested two men: the Gupta brothers’ nephew, Varun Gupta, and Sahara Computers CEO Ashu Chawla. "They were very shocked," an investigator told the Financial Mail. "You could see they didn’t believe this was actually happening to them." That disbelief has defined much of the response to the raids carried out by the enforcement team handling the state capture cases. Already in December, the Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) had obtained a court order to freeze R1.6bn paid by Eskom to consulting firms McKinsey and Trillian on the basis that it had been "the proceeds of unlawful activities". In an affidavit, AFU investigator Samson John Schalkwyk said: "Payments were made out of fraudulently generated invoices and in circu...
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