Businessmen Atul and Rajesh Gupta, arrested in June in Dubai, were wanted on fraud and money laundering charges.
South Africa on Monday formally requested the extradition from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of two brothers of the Gupta family, accused of orchestrating industrial-scale corruption in the country.
Businessmen Atul and Rajesh Gupta, arrested in June in Dubai, were wanted on charges of fraud and money laundering. The arrest warrant mentions a dubious public contract for the equivalent of €1.5 million, linked to an agricultural feasibility study. This is small potatoes compared to the magnitude of the charges against the family.
They are accused of having plundered Africa’s most industrialized country, with the complicity of former president Jacob Zuma. So much so that the South Africans have invented an appropriate formula: they do not speak of corruption but of “capture” of the state.
“We can confirm that the extradition request has been duly submitted to the UAE central authority today,” Justice Minister Ronald Lamola told a news conference. The request is the first step in a process that experts say could take years.
The third brother, Ajay, is not involved in this chapter but is named in another embezzlement and corruption case. The sulphurous trio of Indian origin is accused of having infiltrated the top of the state, taking advantage of a long friendship with Jacob Zuma whom they bought with bribes during his two terms in office (2009-2018). They have methodically siphoned off the country’s coffers, looted state-owned companies and extended their hold to influence the choice of ministers.
In 2018, an independent commission was appointed to investigate state corruption. The ANC then pushed Jacob Zuma to resign; the Guptas vanished into thin air, only to be found in Dubai.