MagRush | October 15, 2019

Africa has been ravaged by rampant pillaging with impunity. Obviously not of colonial nor sectarian proportions. CNN reported last night that South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa said his predecessor Jacob “Zuma’s corruption era costs S. Africa $34 [over R500] billion”. The President has mentioned some measures to roll back “the nine wasted years” of corruption as he calls them. Global superpower has come to South Africa’s aid by effecting sanctions triggered by, interalia, dominos falling at the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture. 

Last week, the United States of America (U.S.A.) government imposed sanctions on the members of Gupta family and an associate in connection with graft allegations in South Africa. The announcement came like a bolt out of the blue sky. The business family originally from India is intricately central to the jaw-dropping revelations at the State Capture Commission of Inquiry [Zondo Commission] in SA.

Therefore, the Gupta family members can no longer conduct business activities in the USA nor benefit (directly) from interests therein. Their assets within American territory or reach are going to be frozen. They can not travel to the United States of America either. Finally, the net is closing in on the crooked family.

On October 10, 2019, U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) dropped a bombshell by issuing a statement:

“[It] sanctioned members of a significant corruption network in South Africa that leveraged overpayments on government contracts, bribery, and other corrupt acts to fund political contributions and influence government actions.  Specifically, OFAC designated Ajay Gupta, Atul Gupta, Rajesh Gupta, and Salim Essa for their involvement in corruption in South Africa ….”

SA and U.S. government agreements and partnership links are rich and alive. Writing on his capacity as the U.S. Embassy & Consulate Ex-Ambassador to SA Patric Gaspard on June 3, 2015 said, “there are more than 600 American companies invested here [SA] contributing an estimated 10% of GDP [Gross Domestic Product] and employing more than 100, 000 South Africans.”

SA also benefits from the African trade pact known as African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) with the U.S. in line with tariff reliefs for exports and related trade exchanges.

For now it is not quite clear what will happen to a sizeable Gupta-family clique of acolytes. “[ajesh] ‘Tony’ Gupta is my guy,” said former SA President’s son Duduzani Zuma at the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture last week. The Gupta brothers handed Zuma junior an executive job in one of their money-spinning overnight empires.

The pressing question on people’s minds is: Who else with links to SA plundering is on the American authorities radar?

The capture of the state was a well-thought-out and coordinated fraud system that political heads used to their self-enrichment. The taps for syphoning government funds were loosened by politicians at the top echelons wielding excessive power within and outside the state. They too, must be summoned to answer for their troubles.

This development of wrapping the Guptas under the knuckles by the most powerful and number one economy in the world is not insignificant. It is a quantum leap towards rolling back most of what went wrong in the past decade, particularly in South Africa.

Within the parameters of geopolitics, bilateral and/or multilateral treaties entered into and signed by countries make it possible to go after sophisticated corruption and criminal syndicates which would ordinary dwarf individual countries’ resources and senseless capital flight would be the order of the day.

It also goes to show that global cooperation has made what was impossible or would take years to untangle webs of corruption networks and resolve them through a ring of a telephone call or transmission and sharing of data from one high office to the next possible. There is, nevertheless, still much to be done investigatively.

Belated as the sanctions by the U.S. treasury may sound, they are quite a relief to the malaise felt by SA citizens suffered on the unbridled and brazen hollowing of state coffers by unprincipled swindlers.

A patronage network designed to divert government funds for self-aggrandizement and create a bulwark buffer against infiltration or exposure has been dismantled to a degree.

Notably, no single member of the Gupta family has been brought to book albeit the stacking evidence in publications, fingerprints in State-owned Enterprises (SOEs) such as Eskom, SABC, Transnet, etc., and citations on the Zondo commission. Their proximity to top government officials secured them SA citizenship.

Interviewed on BBC Africa Ramaphosa said, it is not his duty to arrest people. On the question of being Zuma’s Deputy during the insensitive runaway state plunder he commented that it is least important. What is at issue currently, he responded, is that there are mechanisms in place unraveling the clandestine, sometimes overt criticised period.

Speaking at the Financial Times (FT) Africa Summit Ramaphosa said, financial loss during State Capture amounts to over R500 billion. Citing analysts, he said that financial outflows and losses could run into a trillion.

As it is emerging, it was always going to take monumental resources to round up these unscrupulous perennial delinquents of Gupta family’s ilk. Countries pulling resources together and sharing data on concerns of mutual interest is a better and cost effective way to combat highly orchestrated crimes, money laundering, racketeering, fraud and corruption en masse.

It is understood that the SA government has engaged about eight countries in the West and Asian pacific to help rein in the Gupta family members and their business partners and collaborators wanted in SA.

Their scheduled appearance in the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture chaired by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo bore no fruit. Their wishes were to provide testimony through a video link from a safe haven of their choice, miles and miles away from Johannesburg where the Zondo commission is held. Unbelievable! Such “wishes”! These most-wanted sly (Gupta) brothers are arrogant to the teeth.

Last year (2018), SA authorities tried to bring back the Gupta members to face the music in the country to no success.

On the 27th of May 2018, The National published a piece by Gavin du Venage: “South African officials are in talks with the UAE to secure the repatriation of members of the Gupta family, who are accused of working with former president Jacob Zuma to loot hundreds of millions of dollars from state funds.”

Venage on the articlfe reported that Indian-born businessmen who came in the country in the early 1990s “fled South Africa to Dubai in 2016” after allegations of cosying up with the Zuma regime and its apparatus in exchange for government contracts.

Reports and analysts, as it is common knowledge in the society, are dominated by conversations that the Gupta family and their conniving thieves are not the only ones who wined-and-dined at the expense of the state’s voluminous cookie jar, there are many (people) who have also fed at the trough. Frankly, this Gupta family is a tip of the iceberg.

The Gupta family’s thieving actions and their loot’s acute economic effects on state capture being experienced now in SA will be felt long after the dust has settled, if ever. Although they [new-borns] would not have experienced explicitly the ravages of the Gupta’s shenanigans, will learn of and the generations after them are likely to experience the ripples of corruption upon discovering.

The Gupta’s saga is not yet fully told. And they are not the only family or people (who got embroiled in ransacking the state, SA, there are quite many. It is cold comfort that it took the U.S. government to shake the secured gold-tinted cage and ruffle the diamond-furnished feathers far away from the capture scene.

Fortunately, the arm of justice is devastatingly long. At the moment, the Americans are flexing its muscles. That is a noteworthy milestone.