Shiv Kumar Gupta had a dream, a happy vision as Martin Luther King. Atu’s father, Rajesh and Ajay, sensed that the future was abuzz in democratic South Africa, that, after the end of the white ‘apartheid’ regime, the country would open up to the world and that its new ruling class would need projects and services, providing multiple business opportunities. Driven by their father’s premonition, the brothers flew from the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to Johannesburg in 1993. At first, they set up a modest shoe company and, admittedly, the situation did not seem as bright as they had suspected. But, in less than 20 years, his emporium spanned mining, air travel, media, and technology, among other cutting-edge areas. Now there are no happy endings in this true story. For more than two months, Atu and Rajay have been held in a cell in Dubai. Those entrepreneurs from Asia are accused of having appropriated the African state, literally. The government has already requested his extradition to the United Arab Emirates.
Careerism is a common circumstance in business, but in the case of the Guptas, it took on a ravenous predatory urge. Fiction has not even dared to express such runaway ambition. Neither Julian Sorel, the protagonist of Stendhal’s ‘Red and Black’, nor Georges Duroy, the hero of Guy de Maupassant’s ‘Bel Ami’, can be compared to these incredible individuals because their Machiavellian strategy led them to control nothing less than the Administration of an entire emerging power.
A certain ability to identify allies seems to be the key to successful phagocytosis. In that respect, the leader of the African National Congress, the government party, was the essential piece of the plan, according to the investigations into the conduct of the brothers. Before he was elected presidential candidate, Jacob Zuma appeared as the strong man of the country, despite the fact that a past riddled with corruption scandals risked his venality. The former anti-apartheid fighter, whom they met ‘accidentally’ in 2003, became the main target even before he became Head of State.
THE DATA
1993
the brothers emigrate to Johannesburg and set up a small shoe company. Twenty years later his empire encompassed mining, air transport and technology.
3.000
million dollars has been illegally sent by the Gupta Empire from South Africa to the capital of the United Arab Emirates, according to the South African Council of Churches.
25%
of the Gross Domestic Product, equivalent to 82,600 million dollars, is what the Gupta clan would have appropriated from the South African State. An unlimited plunder.
Two decades after their arrival in South Africa, the clan remained united and lived together in a complex consisting of four mansions with an attached heliport, located in Saxonwold, the most affluent suburb of Johannesburg. But aesthetics, not ethics, revealed its immense power. In 2013, the wedding of Vera Gupta, niece of the aforementioned, with a businessman from Delhi, exposed enormous influence and lack of scruples. The Airbus 330 chartered for the occasion transported 200 guests from India to a South African military base and a convoy of luxury vehicles, flanked by police officers, took them to the wedding venue.
All parties protested this incredible abuse. The Guptas came to the forefront of national news, a condition they have not abandoned since then. His enormous fortune was also exposed. Atul’s alone was estimated at $700 million and the family-owned Sahara Computers firm had 10,000 employees.
Suspicions about the accumulated power began to manifest in the media, although it was Vitjie Mentor who definitively opened Pandora’s box. This deputy of the national Parliament assured that the Guptas invited her in 2010 to her residence and in the presence of Zuma, she was offered the Ministry of Public Companies. Later, Jonas Mcebisi, another parliamentarian, claimed that the same kingmakers proposed him to be finance minister. His generous spirit contrasted, it seems, with a no less daring revenge. The Guptas sought the resignation of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan when he reported suspicious transactions from his firms worth $490 million.
The formal investigation into this phenomenon was launched following the complaint in 2016 of the Catholic priest Stanislau Muyebe to the Public Protector Thuli Madonsela, encouraged by the fear that “the leadership was affecting the poor”. The report of the ‘ombudsman’ revealed an incessant flow of contracts from the Administration and the state companies to the multiple companies of the brothers.
The plot, in which all possible crimes seemed to concur, included prevarication, bribery or influence peddling, and involved the control of the high bureaucracy, subject to the dictates of the brothers. Officials received their instructions and, in return, received money and were promoted, while refusal to collaborate was sanctioned with punishment and dismissal. The result was a control over the public apparatus that led to the coining of the term ‘state capture’.
Public television, the flag carrier, and Eskom, the local energy giant, were among the entities affected. Four years of investigations concluded with the conviction that large corporations, the executive and the government party were subject to their convenience. The Guptas even applied for diplomatic passports, a privilege they did not obtain.
A current of opinion manifested itself on the Internet against these accusations, objecting to the existence of a plot by the white bourgeoisie against the minority of Asian origin. The attempt to exacerbate interracial tensions was identified. The British communication firm Bell Pottinger was behind this campaign. His client was Oakbay Investments, another company of the ineffable brothers.
The shadow of the infamous wedding was very long. Four years after the betrothal, the National Tax Authority seized 220 million rand, about 13 million euros, that the Orange State regional government had given to the Guptas as beneficiaries of the Vrede Dairy Project, a public initiative aimed at supporting black farmers with fewer resources. Apparently, these funds served to pay for the link. Mosebenzi Zwane, the head of the Department of Agriculture and alleged mastermind of the operation, was the family’s candidate for the strategic Ministry of Mineral Resources.
Protests against President Zuma and his disastrous management precipitated his fall in 2018. Cyril Ramaphosa, his successor, promoted the creation of the so-called State Capture Commission of Inquiry, led by Raymond Zondo, Vice President of the Supreme Court. The mission of the also known as the Zondo Commission was arduous since they had to find out all the mechanisms used, the authors and destinations of those diverted funds.
The tracking of embezzled public funds will take years of investigations in banks located in tax havens
The Indian family was grateful that an official judicial report was carried out, but curiously, they left the country as soon as their ally resigned from power. During these last four years, the brothers have refused to return despite the fact that this entity repeatedly required them to return to account for their actions.
However, his departure was not as precipitous as might be expected. Before leaving, the Guptas had already begun a process of selling assets in both the media and mining sectors. The South African banking network stopped working with its business network when the suspicions and accusations intensified. Fortunately, the Bank of Baroda, the third largest financial institution in India, appeared at that time to provide them with financial cover. The Hawks, the elite unit of the South African police, occupied their offices when the investigation of the Gupta accounts took place and, shortly after, the entity left the country “following an international restructuring plan”.
An Interpol notification has allowed the arrest of two brothers in Dubai, but the process may be extraordinarily prolonged with the delaying measures presented by their army of lawyers. And it is that there is no extradition treaty between the United Arab Emirates and South Africa, although the Minister of Justice and Penitentiary Services of South Africa, Ronald Lamola, and the country’s Attorney General, Shamila Batohi, hope to save a stumbling block that, yes, , it will last “several months”.
Furthermore, tracing embezzled public funds may require years of investigations into remiss banks located in no less opaque tax havens. The Zondo Commission, which published a first report last January, continues its work to unravel the criminal network promoted by Zuma, businessmen and officials involved in the looting of democracy in the rainbow country.
The Gupta brothers have only started the counteroffensive to avoid being implicated in this assault on corruption. They hope to quickly return to the mansion with views of the Arabian Gulf and ten suites cared for by a staff of 35 employees. Perhaps they even intend to return to their African farm to continue fulfilling the wish of their father Shiv Kumar, that future of family prosperity and opulence, because in dreams, as is well known, morality does not prevail.
In the country of the ‘zuptas’
All roads of South African corruption lead to President Jacob Zuma. He is not the only one, but he is the worst of those who tried to continue the work of Nelson Mandela, the father of the country. Cyril Ramaphosa, the current chief executive, was a union leader turned wealthy real estate owner today. The latest scandal in a country rich in them affects the current leader. In a farm owned by him, the theft of 4 million dollars in cash has been committed. The existence of this sum that he attributes to the sale of cattle is inexplicable.
The Guptas knew who they were dealing with. Although it may seem surprising, Zuma came to power after facing 18 corruption offenses for his involvement, at the end of the 1990s, in a mega-contract of the South African regime to equip itself militarily. His accession to the presidency prevented prosecution for allegedly accepting bribes from winning firms.
The executive in the hands of Zuma was something like giving the fox the key to the chicken coop. From 2009 to 2018 there were accusations of bad practices, such as the Zumagate, derived from the accusation of using public funds to reform an extensive rural complex. But the problem was much bigger. The Capture of the State Commission says that corruption corroded basic structures of the Administration.
The connection between Zuma and the Gupta empire was so obvious that the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters called the president, his wife Bongi and their sons Duduzile and Duduzane, wage earners of the Indian brothers, ‘zuptas’. The third came to direct Sahara Computers, the first large company of the holding company, today devoid of activity and in debt of some 30 million euros.
The political fallout from a possible trial of Rajesh, Atu and Ajay is unpredictable. The revelations could spark an unprecedented upheaval, perhaps an outburst against the sclerotic ruling party, or perhaps waves of violence like those that followed Zuma’s imprisonment a year ago. The masses, still faithful to the anti-apartheid ideology, maintain allegiances alien to the depravity of their leaders and that refer to the glorious times, when today’s oligarchs fought against a white and exclusive regime.