As someone who has felt the sharp end of the Gupta family’s capture of former president Jacob Zuma and his governments from 2009 until they fled the country at the end of 2017, I could not be happier at news that the US Treasury has imposed stiff sanctions on the three Gupta brothers and their local hireling, Salim Essa.
The sanctions are tough and imposed under the (fairly) recently adopted Magnitsky legislation. Sergei Magnitsky died in 2009 after nearly a year in Russian police custody, where he had been treated with the utmost cruelty and, eventually, murdered. In a quiet way, he became Russia’s Steve Biko.
Sadly for Putin, Magnitsky, a tax lawyer, had been helping a major US investor in Russia, Bill Browder, try to undo a stitch-up by the Russian authorities over his large Russian investment portfolio. Putin underestimated Browder’s strength of character.
He wrote the bestselling book, Red Notice, and then set about lobbying the US to pass laws punishing the people who had murdered his friend. It worked.
In 2016 the US Congress applied the Magnitsky bill globally, aiming not only for the leaders but the managers in charge of human rights abuses around the world.
It can freeze their assets, prevent them from entering the US and prevent anyone who wishes to do any business with the US or in its currency from transacting with a sanctioned person.
Which is what the Gupta brothers and Essa now are. They’re rich enough to live off what they’ve hidden under the bed for the rest of their lives but those lives will without question now change for the worse.
I asked Browder on Twitter what the sanction means. “From this day forward,” he said, “any politician or law firm that takes money from the Guptas will be in violation of US sanctions ...”
Immediately, of course, the cry went up in SA that while America had acted, SA had not. That’s just silly. Under Cyril Ramaphosa there’s been a distinct toenadering between SA and the US.
We have not left the International Criminal Court and Ramaphosa has bumped into President Donald Trump and briefly chatted on more than one occasion. Gary Player is one of only two foreigners Trump follows on Twitter.
Zuma distrusted the US, preferring Russian doctors when he thought he had been poisoned. So it was not surprising that after Zuma’s final justice minister, Michael Masutha, was going to “extradite” a former Mozambican finance minister, Manuel Chang, wanted in the US, back to Maputo, the decision was reversed when Ramaphosa won the May 8 election.
His new justice minister, Ronald Lamola, wants to extradite Chang, who is implicated in a huge fraud involving World Bank loans to Mozambique, to the US. Good political relations help. Of course there was co-operation in this. Lamola had a statement up and running just minutes after the US Treasury news broke.
The new US ambassador to SA, a former South African, has vowed to continue to help fight corruption here. The Americans know when you swipe a Visa card. God help the crooks.
The Guptas having become overnight global pariahs, Ramaphosa has had a good few days
The Guptas having become overnight global pariahs, Ramaphosa has had a good few days. Zandile Gumede, the lackey Zuma had as mayor of Durban, has been, along with associates, further squeezed by the Hawks and the NPA’s asset forfeiture unit, who raided homes and confiscated luxury cars.
Independent Newspapers proprietor Iqbal Survé, rapidly falling foul of a recovering Public Investment Corporation, had his offices raided by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority.
Former SAA chair Dudu Myeni failed to escape a court hearing which will more than likely declare her a delinquent director. And Zuma’s attempt for a permanent stay of prosecution for his role in the 1998 arms deal was turned down by the Pietermaritzburg high court. He will have to stand trial and his lawyers will have to work without Gupta funding.
For the moment that leaves the Guptas’ assets in SA to repurpose. I’d ask Herman Mashaba to take control of the Saxonwold Shebeen and turn it into a public resource for Johannesburg.
A safe place for children. The walls are high. The Optimum and Koornfontein coal mines are still under business rescue and could under current law be expropriated without compensation and given to the mining unions to run.
And if the NPA, pressed as it is, we know, could find one little thing to charge each of the brothers with we could demand of Dubai their immediate extradition.
I would put them in an enclosure at the Johannesburg Zoo, just over the road from their old Saxonwold home, so we can all queue up and throw peanuts and Simba chips at them.
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