OUT OF THE SHADOWS
CHEQUE MATES: How leaked e-mails lay bare Gupta game of state capture
The Gupta files, a trove of leaked e-mails, seem to confirm the controversial family’s audacious scheme to take over key state companies and ministries. But how far can political and legal action go toward dislodging alleged corruption kingpin Jacob Zuma, dismantling their shadow state and bringing the miscreants to book?
For more than two weeks now, SA has been gripped by revelations contained in thousands of e-mails involving businesses of the Gupta family and their associates in government. While the broad allegations contained in the leaked files are not new, the revelations have been both shocking and amusing. Shocking, because of the sheer audacity of a relatively ordinary family that made this country their home from India at the dawn of democracy in 1994. Amusing, because of the laughable nature of some of the schemes hatched in the correspondence, and the gullibility of those the family apparently sought to buy off in its grand project of capturing the state.The data in the approximately 200,000 e-mails dates back to 2012, and measures about 400 gigabytes. Our team of nine journalists, and others in other newspaper stables, have been working flat out for the past 14 days mining the data. That was preceded by IT teams working to make it all easily accessible to the journalists.On the surface,...
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