Digging up unusual, interesting tidbits in and around the business scene
PROPERTIES AND THE STATE
Payback time: VBS loaned Zuma R7.8m in 2016 to pay the government for upgrades at Nkandla Sunday Times/Sandile Ndlovu.
Who’s paying the bills? It’s unclear who has been living in the Saxonwold ‘shebeen’ since the Guptas left — and what about the bond on Nkandla? Justin Brown
ý Two symbols of state capture lie about 500km apart: an imposing compound in the wealthy Joburg suburb of Saxonwold and a decaying Nkandla homestead in rural KwaZulu-Natal. Just who pays the bills for running the former Gupta residences in Joburg is unknown, and secrecy also hides the latest about former President Jacob Zuma’s VBS Mutual Bank loan, which was taken to pay for upgrades at Nkandla. High walls obscure the properties in Saxonwold, once home to the Gupta clan, the alleged masterminds of state capture now in hiding in Dubai or elsewhere in the world. It’s hard to know who, if anyone, still lives in a place mocked as a speakeasy following a reference to it as a shebeen by regular visitor Brian Molefe when he was CEO of Eskom. The house, and another Gupta property in Constantia, Cape Town, have restraint orders against them, obtained by Hermione Cronje before her resignation as head of the Investigating Directorate of the National Prosecuting Authority. Park Village Auctions director Clive Lazarus tells the FM that business rescue practitioners have yet to sell the four properties in Saxonwold. Litigation by the Guptas has put on hold the sale of many properties held in the name of former Gupta companies. “The Saxonwold shebeen has not been sold,” says Lazarus. The properties 3 Saxonwold
Drive, 5 Saxonwold Drive and 7 Saxonwold Drive are held by Confident Concept, while Islandsite Investments owns 19 Erlswold Way, around the corner. Chetali Gupta, Atul Gupta, Rajesh Gupta and Ajay Gupta were the shareholders in Confident Concept and Islandsite. In February 2018, the shareholders of both companies put them into business rescue. But Chetali Gupta, who is Atul Gupta’s wife, changed her mind and, in November 2018, applied to the high court to remove the business rescue practitioners. The battle between Chetali Gupta and the rescue practitioners went to the Constitutional Court, which in August rejected her application. Smit Sewgoolam Inc director Bouwer van Niekerk, representing the business rescue practitioners of Confident Concept and Islandsite Investments, tells the FM that following the conclusion of the court case the business rescue practitioners of both companies will sell the properties. Van Niekerk says he understands that people occupy the four Saxonwold properties. “We are not sure of the identity of the supposed occupiers,” he says. He says the occupiers of all four properties are covering the costs of running them. Van Niekerk says the occupiers
are represented by attorney Sumenthren Pillay of SP Attorneys. The FM sent Pillay questions by e-mail about the occupiers but he did not respond. The FM visited the property at 5 Saxonwold Drive. The guards at the gate said people live there, but declined to say who. Neighbours said they were unsure if anyone lived on the property. An affidavit filed in the battle for the removal of the business rescue practitioners reveals who might live there: it states that Chetali Gupta is a resident at 5 Saxonwold Drive. But one of the business rescue practitioners, Kurt Knoop, said in court papers that he did not have an address for Chetali Gupta in Dubai. Though she claimed to be a resident in Saxonwold, neither she nor her husband lived there. Knoop wrote: “They appeared to be living in Dubai, where Mrs Gupta deposed her affidavits. However,
Chetali Gupta provided no address in Dubai.” The FM e-mailed Chetali Gupta’s lawyer, Rudi Krause, asking whether his client lived at the Saxonwold properties and if he knew who else lived there. Krause is a director of the criminal law firm BDK Attorneys. “I will take instructions and revert,” Krause said. As for Zuma’s finances relating to Nkandla, VBS Mutual Bank loaned the former president R7.8m in September 2016 to pay the government for the upgrades. This followed former public protector Thuli Madonsela’s finding that some upgrades were not security related. In a report in March 2014, Madonsela found that Zuma unduly benefited from upgrades such as a swimming pool, cattle kraal and amphitheatre, which had cost taxpayers R250m. According to a Sunday World
December 16 - December 22, 2021
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