UAE police have arrested two members of the Gupta family on charges of plundering the South African state over the past decade with the help of former President Jacob Zuma.
Atul and Rajesh Gupta, who are wanted for fraud and money laundering in South Africa, where they once controlled a business empire with connections to the ruling African National Congress, were arrested in the United Arab Emirates on Friday, the ministry said on Monday. of Justice of South Africa.
“Discussions between various UAE and South African law enforcement agencies on the way forward are ongoing,” the ministry added.
The arrests will mark the biggest milestone to date for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s efforts to prosecute South Africa’s largest apartheid scandal, the so-called “capture” of the state during Zuma’s presidency for the benefit of the alleged benefit of the business interests of the Gupta.
A Gupta lawyer, who has always denied wrongdoing, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Along with his brother Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta used influence with Zuma to direct major government contracts and ministerial appointments in favor of his mining business interests in the media, according to a judicial investigation, Ramaphosa reported this year.
Zuma “easily opened the doors” to the trio of Indian-born brothers to plunder public companies and control ministries, the investigation said in a report in April. “President Zuma was captured by the Gupta and they were able to get him to do whatever he wanted to advance his business interests and advance the capture of the state,” he added.
The relationship between Gupta and Zuma opened in 2015 when Mcebisi Jonas, the then deputy finance minister, said the family had offered him massive cash bribes to take over the main job.
The scandal finally accelerated the fall of Zuma in 2018, when the ANC replaced him as president with Ramaphosa, his former deputy who won the party leadership.
Ramaphosa has pledged to clean up the state and repair the damage to the institutions emptied by the graft. But prosecutions have been slow, even after years of witnessing the judicial investigation.
The Guptas fled South Africa the day Zuma left the presidency and never returned. The United Arab Emirates ratified an extradition treaty with South Africa last year. In recent years, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom have also imposed sanctions on the Gupta under anti-corruption powers.
South Africa issued arrest warrants against Atul and Rajesh Gupta last year on charges of fraud and money laundering for allegedly looting a public contract issued by the provincial government of the Free State of South Africa. The charges were seen as a test case for broader state capture processing.
Zuma has always denied any wrongdoing and said the investigation into the capture of the state had political motives against him. Zuma was briefly jailed last year for contempt of court order for attending the investigation prior to his medical parole.
Zuma’s arrest sparked what Ramaphosa called a “failed insurrection” that sparked the worst post-apartheid violence in South Africa with looting, arson and attacks on infrastructure that killed more than 300 people.
Political tensions over the legacy of the capture of the state have resurfaced recently. Last week, the South African presidency said a senior official had received a death threat, including a bullet in his mailbox, urging Ramaphosa “not to proceed with the findings of the state’s capture.”