The National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) is set to fight an appeal by a Gupta company in which it seeks to be granted legal standing to oppose the restraining of its assets worth more than R20m.
The NDPP will be arguing in the Free State High Court on Friday that representatives of Islandsite Investment, a Gupta company registered in SA, have made “inconsistent and contradictory positions” in the case.
The directors of Islandsite, represented by Ronica Ragavan, a co-director, want to oppose the interim restraining order which surrendered properties owned by Islandsite Investments to the state pending the conclusion of a R25m Estina dairy farm feasibility study fraud case.
The court will hear an appeal on Friday against a judgment delivered by the judge president of the Free State High Court, Cagney Musi, in August last year in favour of the NDPP. It successfully argued that directors representing Islandsite Investment have no legal standing to oppose the attachment of its assets. The restraining order was obtained by the NPA's Investigative Directorate.
Islandsite Investments has been under voluntary business rescue since 2018.
Now, two different sets of law firms have both filed papers giving notice of intention to defend on behalf of Islandsite Investments, with one representing business rescue practitioners (BRPs) and the other appearing on behalf of Ragavan.
In its court papers, the NDPP raised the anomalies in the case as some of the grounds for the appeal to be thrown out, arguing that the “application was fundamentally misguided and misdirected”.
“It is not possible in our law for... a party to take two differing positions on an issue. The directors [purportedly on behalf of Islandsite] say that the judgment of Musi JP [judge president] should be set aside on appeal, and the BRPs [purportedly on behalf of Islandsite] say that any such appeal should not succeed,” argued the NDPP in court papers.
Gupa brothers Atul and Rajesh and their wives Chetali and Arti, directors of Islandsite, are among more than a dozen accused in a R24.9m procurement fraud case that is before the Bloemfontein magistrate's court.
In 2011, a controversial feasibility study contract that also benefited Islandsite Investment was awarded to Nulane Investment, owned by Gupta associate Iqbal Sharma, in preparation for work to roll out the Vrede dairy project.
The directors want to have a legal standing to be able to oppose an interim restraining order against assets held by the company, including a R21m Constantia property in Cape Town. The court hearing for the confirmation of the restraining order is scheduled for next month.
The NDPP further argued that the directors of Islandsite “assert a right to represent Islandsite on two mutually inconsistent and contradictory bases”.
“They [directors] say that this right flows from the Companies Act 71 of 2008... on this basis, they contend that the BRPs are not entitled to represent Islandsite in this litigation. In that event, they should have objected to the BRPs representing the company, and sought their exclusion,” the court papers stated.
The NDPP argued that such a stance “is unknown in our law”.
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