“Honourable House Chairperson,
The ACDP asserts that the prospect of the Gupta brothers being extradited to South Africa from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has a personal interest for most South Africans. The impact on State capture cannot be underestimated, given the wide range of charges including fraud, corruption, and money laundering, worth billions of rands, and involving alleged collusion from the highest office in the land, corrupting officials at every level.
Clearly, we would not be in the situation of extradition at all, had the Gupta’s not been protected, allowing to leave the country, despite compelling evidence against them. The failure of extradition of the Gupta brothers from the UAE sees many contradictions and raises more questions than answers.
The National Prosecuting Authority said it was deeply concerned about the failure of the extradition as it had worked through their Central Authority and ‘ticked all the boxes’. However, Minister Lamola contradicted this saying the extradition failed on a technicality of a cancelled arrest warrant. But the NPA indicated that “all the boxes were ticked.” Is this incompetence or deliberate?
The years of secrecy and hidden corrupt activity, must be exposed. According to the Zondo commission, theft of more than 57-billion rand of public funds was involved by the alleged architects of state capture, the Gupta family, who personally raked in at least 15 and a half billion rand. In the view of the ACDP, anything to do with these brothers deserves complete exposure.
The ACDP welcomes the assurance, given by Minister Lamola, that the brothers continue to be safely incarcerated and trust that the Minister himself, had visuals of them in jail. This after there were purported sightings of Gupta brothers in Switzerland and reports of their having attained passports from the Vanuatu Islands in the middle of the Pacific.
The ACDP calls on the Department of Justice and the joint task team (JTT), set up with officials from the UAE, to leave no stone unturned in ensuring the successful extradition of the Gupta brothers and use the lessons learned as best practice for other extradition cases. A failure to do so, is to rub salt into the many economic wounds of South Africans.
I thank you.”
-ENDS-
