Guptas’ shifty Dubai clinic project exposed
Funding linked to Free State, North West health tenders Jessie Duarte’s son-in-law named
The Gupta family was planning to set up a billion-dollar medical facility in Dubai with shareholders who were awarded lucrative tenders to provide provincial health departments with mobile clinics in the Free State and the North West.
New disclosures from the leaked Gupta e-mails have provided further evidence of the Guptas seeking ways to send funds earned from state contracts in SA to Dubai, where they have spent at least R350m on lavish properties for themselves and President Jacob Zuma’s son, Duduzane.
An investigation by Business Day has established that a company named Cureva, which was later renamed Mediosa, was awarded a three-year contract in October 2015 by the Free State health department.
The pilot project for the supply and running of two mobile medical clinics has a potential value of R50m a year, while the Gupta family and their associates planned for a national rollout worth about R1bn a year.
The Gupta leaks showed cost calculation spreadsheets were sent to Tony Gupta months before the tender was awarded and before Cureva was established by their business associate Sunil Sachdeva, co-founder of Indian medical facility company Medanta.
The Guptas’ relationship with Sachdeva stretches back to 2013, when they hosted him and his family at a luxury game lodge, the leaks show.
Medanta is the same company the Guptas planned to partner with to build a megamedical facility in Dubai.
The Free State award to Cureva, then named Dinovert, was sent to Gupta ally Ian Whitley, the chief of staff in Cooperative Governance Minister Des van Rooyen’s office. Whitley is also ANC top six member Jessie Duarte’s son-in-law.
Whitley said this week he had no business dealings with Cureva. “I was approached during the start-up phase to be their South African representative and after careful consideration, declined the offer.”
Asked why the tender award letter was addressed to him, he said he “was listed as the contact person even though I had never
concluded any employment agreement. The company had failed to update their records.”
At the time, the provincial department of health was under financial administration by the provincial treasury. The award letter was signed by treasury chief financial officer Godfrey Mahlatsi, who this week said neither he nor the Treasury was aware of the Guptas’ involvement in the deal. He said that Cureva would be paid about R954 per patient, with a target of 25,000 people a year per mobile clinic.
According to data in the leaked Gupta e-mails, at the time the tender was awarded, Cureva was wholly owned by SAS Global, a company registered in Dubai. It is suspected of being a Gupta front company.
Cureva’s directors at the time included Kuben Moodley, who has been implicated in helping Gupta lieutenant Salim Essa extract vast fees from Transnet and Eskom from an unlawful contract with global consultancy McKinsey. Moodley did not respond to e-mailed questions.
While Sachdeva was sending the Guptas Cureva’s cost calculations on the mobile clinic project, he was cementing a partnership with the family to construct the medical facility. According to a presentation prepared by global consultancy Bain & Company, which Sachdeva also e-mailed to Tony Gupta, the project in Dubai had a potential to earn $1.5bn a year.
In a media release issued in January 2015, Medanta chairman and renowned surgeon Dr Naresh Trehan said the development was a joint venture with “India-based industrialist Ravi Jaipuria and Dubai-based businessman Murari Jalan”.
A video showing an architectural visualisation of the facility was sent to Tony Gupta. The video, believed to have been used to lure potential investors, shows Sachdeva and the Gupta family as project partners.
A spokesman for the Dubai Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday said he could not find any person related to the deal and it was unclear whether the plan was going ahead. Attempts to obtain comment from Medanta were unsuccessful.
The leaks show Sachdeva secured investment from Jaipiuria and Jalan through a deal that was copied to Tony Gupta and marked “confidential”.
Mediosa director Inish Merchant said its mobile clinics began operating in January in the Free State and North West.
Sachdeva and the Gupta family did not respond to e-mailed questions.