Latest news with #GuptaFamily
News24
24-07-2025
- Business
- News24
Bargain hunters bid for Gupta properties, but only one multimillion-rand home sells
Just one of the three Gupta family's homes in Saxonwold was sold at an auction on Thursday. Number 3 Saxonwold Drive, a four-bedroom home worth R5.5 million, which has fallen into disrepair, was sold for R3.3 million. The home is 349m2 and the City charges monthly rates of R6 304.81 on the property. All three of the interlocking homes and their contents went on auction on Thursday, and most of the bidders, wanting to remain anonymous, bid online. Number 5 Saxonwold, the home where most of the family's nefarious deals were said to have been struck, according to the auctioneers, received a bid of R4 million, and Park Village Auctions refused to entertain a bid of below R5 million. The building is 1 547m2 and is worth R21.7 million. The municipal rates on this property amount to more than R19 186. Thahasello Mphatsoe/News24 Thahasello Mphatsoe/News24 Thahasello Mphatsoe/News24 Number 7 Saxonwold, a triple-storey house with a checkered roof and rounded facade, which has a municipal value of R36.8 million, only received one bid for R3 million. The rates alone on this property amount to R29 433.78 a month. Meanwhile, the contents of Number 5 Saxonwold, which include an indoor spa, were auctioned off for R100 000. The contents of Number 7 Saxonwold, arguably worth more than the rest of the homes, decorated with original Indian wooden designs, went for R60 000.
The Herald
24-06-2025
- Politics
- The Herald
A walk through the Gupta's properties before auction day
Three properties formerly owned by the controversial Gupta family in Saxonwold, Johannesburg, are set to be auctioned individually on July 24. Located within a single estate, the homes include a three-storey mansion, a single-storey house with three bedrooms, and a 17-bedroom luxury dwelling. The properties once served as the Gupta family's South African residence during their rise to political influence. During a recent media tour hosted by the auctioneers tasked with selling the properties, remnants of their lifestyle, from unused furniture to private prayer rooms and locked safes, offered a rare glimpse into the spaces they left behind when they departed the country in 2018 under a cloud of state capture allegations. The Saxonwold compound was where the Gupta family wined and dined politicians in what was widely viewed as part of a strategy to capture state influence and secure government contracts. The Guptas fled South Africa and are being pursued by the government to face criminal charges. First on the tour is house number five, a three-storey compound known among staff and auctioneers as 'the white house'. From the outside, it appears as if the façade is weeping, the white paint peeling and curling off the walls like old wallpaper, revealing the brick beneath. You are not welcomed by grandeur. Instead, it's the blue park village auction posters pasted on pillars that meet your eye first, declaring the property's impending fate. Inside, the house feels cold. Not just in temperature but in spirit. There is a faint scent of abandonment and stale air that clings to the corridors. Light filters through thick curtains and dust dancing in the rays. The house has eight bedrooms, each with its own bathroom. Some rooms still cradle remnants of life, dusty bed sheets, half-burnt candles, unopened shower gels and forgotten toys. It's like time hit pause, but only for some things. In one room, a prayer space is preserved with uncanny stillness. Two red chairs, incense, salts, candles and a picture of their deity remain, untouched. It feels sacred almost off-limits even now. All the electronics have been ripped from the walls. Wires dangle where televisions used to hang. Yet old-school telephones remain beside each bed. There is mould in corners of the bedrooms, fed by roof leaks and disuse. Portraits signed by artist June Tuckett, hang slightly skew on the walls. According to Art Market Tuckett is an 'artist born in South Africa in 1944. The artist's works have gone up for sale at public auction 75 times, mostly in the painting category.' The indoor swimming pool still holds water, stagnant, cloudy and green. At the back, the garden remains lush with trees and flowers, but the grass is beginning to die. Nature is trying to reclaim what power it has left behind.
Mail & Guardian
13-06-2025
- Mail & Guardian
National Prosecuting Authority preparing to reinstate charges against Nulane accused
State capture: Ajay Gupta, Atul and Rajesh. (Adrian de Kock/Netwerk24) The 'We are tirelessly working towards that,' said NPA spokesperson Mthunzi Mhaga . On Thursday, the NPA prevailed in the supreme court of appeal (SCA), which found that Judge It said what transpired in the high court could only be summed up as a 'failure of justice'. The SCA ruling came almost two years after Gusha That decision meant that none of them had to take the stand to answer the case put forth by the state. Gusha found that the prosecution had 'regrettably failed to pass even the barest of thresholds' in proving that the accused colluded to defraud the Free State government and ensure some R24 million was funnelled to a United Arab Emirates (UAE) Standard Chartered Bank account linked to the Gupta family. Gupta associate Iqbal Sharma was arrested in 2021, nearly a decade after Free State officials deviated from public finance rules to awarded a contract worth R24.9 million for a feasibility study to his newly-founded Nulane Investments. It pinpointed Paras, an Indian firm linked to the Guptas, as the preferred entity to a dairy project in Vrede in the Free State. This would later become the Estina dairy farm scam in which more than R280 million allegedly flowed to the Gupta family. But Gusha, an acting judge, found that the prosecution was unable to prove that provincial officials broke the law when they gave the contract to Nulane. It meant that the case collapsed at the first hurdle, because without proof that the money was stolen, the state could not sustain the charge of money-laundering in relation to the rapid-fire transfers that followed to companies in the Gupta stable. The SCA agreed with the state that Gusha made a litany of errors in law and fact, resulting in a failure of justice. She had been obliged to consider the totality of evidence, and had failed to do so. 'The inference is inescapable — and the judgment itself shows — that the judge had closed her mind to the evidence adduced by the state. 'This is unfortunate, particularly in a case such as this, where it was prima facie established that scarce public funds were unlawfully extracted from the department and channelled to the UAE, by fraud and the misuse of power.' Hence, the appellate court said, the acquittal of the accused was unfair to the prosecution. The prosecution had relied on the doctrine of common purpose to prove that all accused were part of a conspiracy to defraud the government, as were Atul and Rajesh Gupta. It had planned to add them to the list of accused if they were surrendered to South Africa. The SCA said there was evidence that three Free State officials worked together to ensure Nulane was appointed and paid and, further, that fraud and money-laudering was committed with the cooperation of the rest of the accused, among them Ronica Ragavan, the director of the Gupta family's Islandsite Investment. That was one of the companies in the family's business empire through which the state allegedly the money extracted from the Free State was laundered with 'bewildering rapidity'. There was a real likelihood, the SCA said, that the accused would have incriminated each other, had they been put on the stand. 'The high court misapplied s174 of the CPA [Criminal Prosecution Act]: a court should not discharge an accused who might be incriminated by a co-accused. This was unfair to the state,' the court said. 'The trial in the high court can be summed up in a single sentence: This was a failure of justice.' It added that regrettably this undermined public confidence in the criminal justice system. The SCA ruling provided some comfort for the NPA a week after the Bloemfontein high court ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to try Ace Magashule's former assistant, Moroadi Cholota, for her role in the R225 million Free State asbestos scam case. The court found that her extradition from the United States was unlawful as the NPA had failed to challenge an SCA ruling that only the minister of justice, and not the prosecuting authority, had the power to apply for extradition, in due time. The NPA is seeking to overturn this ruling as well.
