Seven red flags remain waving in the breeze
Early in the making of her 355-page State of Capture report, released this month, former public protector Thuli Madonsela yielded. The full scope of state capture allegations could not immediately be investigated with the resources at hand, she said.
Eventually she decreed a presidential inquiry to take the investigation forward, but not before including, as passing mentions scattered throughout the report, the seven lines of inquiry she believed should be pursued:
)PX UIF 4"#$ B QVCMJD broadcaster, began charging government departments to act as conduits for them to reach the public, a service it had previously offered for free, and splitting this new stream of revenue with a Gupta-owned newspaper;
5IF SFMBUJPOTIJQ CFUXFFO state-owned weapons company Denel and its Gupta-linked supplier, VR Laser Services, as well as the related (or completely separate, depending on who you ask) VR Laser Asia;
4UBUF PXOFE 5SBOTOFUµT many large payments to financial advisory companies Regiments Capital and Trillian, which had denied what appeared to be clear Gupta links, only to be found to have helped the family to pay for a coal mine;
4UBUF PXOFE BJSMJOF 4""µT spending on the Gupta-owned The New Age newspaper, such as buying, at the last count, at least 5.9-million copies of the publication;
4UBUF PXOFE FMFDUSJDJUZ DPNpany Eskom’s contracts with a Gupta-owned coal mine to supply its Majuba power station, after Madonsela’s phase-one report raised red flags about contracts with Eskom’s Arnot power station;
5IF BQQBSFOUMZ GBTU BOE MPPTF manner in which the Indian state-owned Bank of Baroda dealt with the mine rehabilitation trust funds it held, and seemed to pretend it was lending a Gupta company money when it really was not; and
8IFUIFS 1SFTJEFOU +BDPC Zuma sanctioned the actions of his mining minster, Mosebenzi Zwane, when Zwane, according to the State of Capture report, may have used “his official position of authority to unfairly and unduly influence a contract for a friend or, in this instance, his boss’s son at the expense of the state”.
The report also hints that state financing of Gupta enterprises, such as a loan from the Industrial Development Corporation, should be included, as should the awarding of mining licences to Gupta companies. — Phillip de Wet