Authorities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are ignoring a request for a ministerial meeting on South Africa’s bid to secure the extradition of the Gupta brothers, amid a report that they are applying for asylum in several central African states.
The South African government sent a note verbale to Dubai earlier this month asking for a meeting between Justice Minister Ronald Lamola and the director general of justice, Doc Mashabane, and their Emirati counterparts.
To date, there has been no acknowledgement of receipt or reply, a well-placed source told the Mail & Guardian on Friday. It was the third note verbale in three months. Missives sent in January and February to inquire about progress in the extradition process also went unanswered, prompting the ministry to request a face-to-face meeting.
Mashabane went to Dubai in October last year.
He met Abdul Rahman Murad Al Balushi, the director of the international relations department at the Emirati ministry of justice and other representatives from the central authority, including the prosecutor who is attending to the extradition request.
The justice ministry said Al Balushi was requested to keep the South African embassy in Dubai and the department of justice abreast of developments.
Mashabane was assured that all the necessary information and paperwork to process the request, which was filed on 25 July last year, was in place and that the Gupta brothers remained in custody.
The state was hoping to secure the Guptas’ surrender in time to add them to the list of accused alongside former Transnet board member Iqbal Sharma in the Nulane Investments trial. Instead, the Free State high court reserved judgment in the fraud and money-laundering case last month, with no court date set in Dubai for an extradition hearing.
In the meantime, a report by Paris-based African Intelligence suggests the Gupta brothers are taking advantage of the lull in the process to secure safe passage to a third country.
African Intelligence reported this week that the two have submitted asylum applications to the governments of Cameroon and Central African Republic (CAR), which “are currently studying their applications”.
“Rather than sit and wait for the events to unfold, the two men are trying to take matters into their own hands by securing an escape route back to the African continent,” it wrote.
“Their requests for asylum have been sent to countries outside the Southern African Development Community, whose members are bound by a protocol to respect extradition requests from fellow member states, of which South Africa is one.”
The report said the Gupta brothers had made contact with several Cameroonian advisers to President Faustin-Archange Touadéra in Bangui, and noted that they have history and contacts in the region.
In 2013, Sharma and Gupta lieutenant Salim Essa became interested in exploiting oil opportunities in the Salamat and Doseo basins on the border between the CAR and Chad, and set up a company called Gade Oil and Gas. Former Eskom chairperson Ben Ngubane became the chairperson of the company.
Political events derailed their plans and Gade Oil and Gas never obtained oil permits in Chad.
The justice ministry on Friday described the report as troubling and said South Africa would make contact with the countries in question to ascertain whether they had received requests from the Guptas.
“If this information is proven to be correct, it raises serious concerns and questions about the integrity of the process in the UAE,” said Chrispin Phiri, Lamola’s spokesman.
The justice ministry on Thursday issued a statement saying Lamola “is concerned that following a visit to the United Arab Emirates to ensure that the application meets the requirements of the UAE authorities, there has not been an update on the first court appearance of the fugitives to determine whether there will be a hearing on the application for extradition”.
It added that Lamola was pursuing the matter through diplomatic channels, “pursuant to the extradition treaty between the two countries”.
The extradition request filed eight months ago not only conveyed the fraud charges in the Nulane Investments case, but also named them as suspects in the Estina dairy farm scam.
The Nulane and Estina cases are inextricably linked.
In the first, the Free State was criminally overcharged for a feasibility study designed to ensure that the tender for the dairy farm development project in Vrede went to Estina, from where the state alleges R280 million flowed to what it terms, in court papers, “the Gupta enterprise”, and eventually helped to fund the infamous Gupta family wedding at Sun City.
The initial stages of the interaction between Pretoria and Dubai were marred by an almost comical misunderstanding.
In August last year, the department of justice received a note asking why the request for the state capture suspects’ surrender was submitted by the National Prosecuting Authority’s Andrea Johnson and not by the department as the designated central authority in the matter.
This would mean that it did not comply with the extradition treaty between the two countries, which had been ratified only two months earlier.
The confusion stemmed from the differences in legal systems and nomenclature between the two countries, plus the fact that the communications were translated between English and Arabic. The Emirati authorities understood Johnson to be a judge and therefore questioned her role in relation to the request.
Their justice department rushed to correct this.