THE GUPTA family last week trumpeted the fact that they get only 1% of their business from government as evidence that they focus on “business, not politics”. Intuitively, this seems implausible, given the coal their company Tegeta Resources shunts to Eskom, or the flood of government adverts crammed into The New Age newspaper.Nonetheless, say the Guptas, KPMG “has been our auditors for 15 years” and has “verified” these numbers. (You might remember KPMG for other reasons, like merrily signing off the accounts of Fifa for 16 years, or compiling the infamous report on the Sars rogue unit.)Still, even if that 1% figure is indeed true, it misses the point: selling to government isn’t the only way to suckle from the state teat. A far easier way is to get government to finance your venture from the get-go.Take the case of the Gupta-owned Oakbay Resources.Back in April 2010, the state-owned Industrial Development Corp (IDC) gave Oakbay a R250m leg-up to buy Shiva Uranium — then bent over ...
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