Mails expose plot to smear SA Treasury
Gupta PR firm Bell Pottinger targets Jonas
GUPTA family associates plotted with British PR firm Bell Pottinger to launch a smear campaign against National Treasury by painting former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas as corrupt, leaked e-mails show.
They also show how President Jacob Zuma’s son Duduzane Zuma put himself in charge of a fightback by the Guptas as they battled negative reports on their relationship with government leaders.
Damning e-mails exposing the extent of the family’s control over the state also shed more light on its relationship with the controversial British PR firm. Correspondence shows the plot against Jonas was hatched a day after he said he turned down a bribe offer that included him becoming finance minister after the removal of Nhlanhla Nene.
The parties drafted a press release purporting to come from Hamza Farooqui, the managing director for WorldSpace South Africa, and partner to Gupta associate Salim Essa in Vardonspan, a company that wanted to buy the Habib Bank.
Farooqui’s statement, drafted by Bell Pottinger staffer Nick Lambert on March 17, read: “I confirm that I paid inducement fee to Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas, through the chief of staff to the ministry of finance, Pule Setai, and relative of Jonas’s, as well as other benefits, such as flight upgrades and luxury hotel rooms.
“I am willing to sign an affidavit in support of the above statement. I am making this statement in a bid to shed light on corruption within the ministry of finance.”
The statement was never released as Bell Pottinger’s Victoria Geoghegan later said the media would not run it because of possible legal issues.
Farooqui read but did not respond to a Whatsapp query from TMG on the statement, while Gupta family lawyer Gert Van Der Merwe said he would try and reach the family.
Duduzane, who did not respond to numerous requests for comment, was fingered in a Sunday Times report yesterday on his influence on the state.
Besides character assassination, the e-mails show other work done by the company as part of their publicity work for Oakbay and the Guptas included revising press statements made by the uMkhonto WeSizwe Military Veterans Association and drawing up notes for controversial Youth League President Collen Maine.
Central to the work were former Oakbay CEO Nazeem Howa and Bell Pottinger’s Lambert and Geoghegan, who seem to have overseen most of the work. Last February, the company also mulled lobbying the “ANC or constituent bodies” to react to a press release by the EFF in Gauteng threatening to drive the Guptas out of the province.
Geoghahan asked whether they could be lobbied to say something like: “The EFF comments fly in the face of the revolution against apartheid; threatening the safety and security of workers and committing to physically drive people out of SA on the basis of their race is behaviour unbecoming of our people, our democracy and our Constitution.”
The company also told Duduzane it saw its role as deflecting criticism directed at Zuma and turning the nation’s focus to the need for “economic emancipation”.
In return for these services and others the company asked for a monthly £100 000 (R1.6-million) retainer excluding travel costs for a team to South Africa every month.
Duduzane also asks that they assist him in a campaign involving research he had done. “It will also require a visual campaign of sorts T-shirts/banners etc … [in] creating a hard hitting message along the lines of the #EconomicEmancipation or whatever it is,” he said.
Though it is not clear whether these campaigns were ever executed, the ethos is similar to that of the #WhiteMonopolyCapital campaign, which, the Sunday Times previously reported, was also influenced by Bell Pottinger.
At the time all involved denied any conspiracy. Attempts to get comment from him and ANCYL spokesman Mlondi Mkhize failed.
Van Der Merwe called yesterday’s reports “fake news”. He said the family denied any wrongdoing or paying any amounts to ministers or the president and reserved its rights.