Parliament to summon Guptas
THE GUPTAS will have to appear before the inquiry into state capture in Parliament amid claims they are facing imminent arrest.
Acting chairperson of the portfolio committee on public enterprises, Zukiswa Rantho, confirmed yesterday that the Guptas would be called to Parliament after the State of the Nation address next month.
This also followed a letter sent to the committee by one of the brothers last year, demanding to appear before it after he was implicated in wrongdoing.
Ajay Gupta had said he would be out of the country from mid-December until January 15, when he would be available to come to Parliament.
But Rantho said they would not be dictated to. She said the committee would next week hear the evidence of suspended Eskom chief financial officer Anoj Singh, and head of generation Matshela Koko.
It was reported a few days ago that one of the Gupta brothers was facing imminent arrest, but this was denied by the Hawks.
Rantho said they still had to determine the exact date for the Guptas.
“We said our legal team must look at the letter (from Ajay Gupta), but we are not going to cave in to the demands of the Guptas. They didn’t need to respond to it in 2017, they can respond to it in 2018.
“It is us who are going to call the Guptas. After our interaction with Koko we will sit and decide on the way forward. But the Guptas will come in February,” said Rantho.
She said it had been part of their programme to deal with the Guptas as it had been raised before.
She said members of the committee had been calling for the Guptas to come and account for their activities.
Suspended head of legal and compliance at Eskom, Suzanne Daniels, told the committee that last year she was invited to a meeting with Ajay Gupta, President Jacob Zuma’s son Duduzane, Deputy Minister of Public Enterprises, Ben Martins, and businessman Salim Essa in Melrose Arch.
However, Ajay Gupta wrote to the committee disputing Daniels’ evidence, saying he had been in India at the time and was attending a religious festival. He also sent pictures of himself at the festival.
Martins also disputed Daniels’ evidence, and said he was attending the funeral of former government spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa, and later the ANC National Executive Committee meeting in Irene, Pretoria.
Daniels had told the committee that at the meeting in Melrose Arch, Ajay Gupta had said he was going to speak to someone in the office of the deputy judge president in Gauteng to get a date for this year for Brian Molefe’s court case. This would have been after the ANC conference in Nasrec in December last year.