Gupta family, South Africa
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1993-2018: a controversial innings
Guptas: A family at the heart of Zuma’s troubles, February 15, 2018: The Times of India
A politically-connected business dynasty that moved to South Africa from India, the Gupta family finds itself at the centre of many of the scandals that have dogged President Jacob Zuma’s administration.
A day after the ruling ANC ordered Zuma out of office, the Guptas’ prominent role in his presidency was highlighted as elite crime-busters raided the family’s mansion in Johannesburg.
The family is headed by Ajay, Atul and Rajesh (“Tony”) Gupta, three brothers from Uttar Pradesh.
Led by Atul, they arrived in South Africa in 1993 as whiteminority apartheid rule crumbled, a year before Nelson Mandela won the country’s first democratic elections. As the country opened up to foreign investment, the Guptas — previously small-scale businessmen in India — built a sprawling empire involved in computers, mining, media, technology and engineering.
The New Age, an ardently pro-Zuma newspaper, was launched in 2010, and the 24-hour news channel ANN7 took to the airwaves in 2013 with a similar editorial slant. They had developed close links with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party focusing particularly on Zuma, well before he became president in 2009.
Zuma’s son Duduzane was a director of the Gupta-owned Sahara Computers, named after their hometown of Saharanpur, and has been involved with several of the family’s other companies. Zuma’s third wife Bongi Ngema and one of his daughters have also been in the employ of the Guptas.
Former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas claimed in March 2015 that the Guptas had offered him the post of finance minister, in return for obeying the family’s instructions — for which he would allegedly be paid 600 million rand ($50 million). Backbench ANC lawmaker David van Rooyen was then revealed to have visited the Guptas’ home the night before his brief appointment as finance minister on December 9, 2015.
South Africa’s ethics watchdog, the Public Protector, published a report in October 2016, finding that the state-owned electricity monopoly had awarded a massive coal order to a then-Gupta linked business at well above market prices. The report also alleged that former mining minister Mosebenzi Zwane “travelled to Switzerland with the Guptas to help them seal the deal” to buy a struggling coal mine.
In recent years, major banks have withdrawn their facilities to the Guptas, complicating the payment of salaries to staff and the day-to-day running of their empire.
2017: allegations
Internal warnings on large cash transfers out of South Africa by the powerful Gupta business family were not heeded by HSBC, according to a British peer, who has demanded UK regulators probe the London-headquartered multinational lender for “possible criminal complicity“ in money laundering, reported leading London daily Financial Times.
The Gupta family owns businesses spanning computer equipment, media and mining. In 2016 Atul Gupta became the seventh wealthiest person in South Africa with an estimated net worth of $773.47 million. The family had migrated from the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to South Africa in 1993, shortly before the country's first democratic elections, to establish a computer firm. Former Labour cabinet minister Peter Hain informed the House of Lords last Wednesday that he had asked the UK Treasury to seek a probe into allegations against an unknown British bank for illicit transfers of funds on behalf of the Guptas, who are at the centre of a corruption scandal in South Africa, newspaper reported on Monday .
Incidentally , the paper said, Hain had on Tuesday separately sent a letter to the Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), mentioning evidence that HSBC's internal systems had red-flagged the transfers as suspicious. Hain told the Lords on Wednesday that he had information that the UK headquarters had directed to ignore the transfers.
The FCA has said it received the letter and will respond in due course. The letter from Hain, who grew up in South Africa, urged the FCA to probe “a serious breach“ of the watchdog's practice at HSBC UK.
