In 2016, a business-person advanced R842m to Gupta company Tegeta Resources, which was used as part of the payments to acquire Optimum Coal Mine in Mpumalanga.
Daniel McGowan, who is now also based in Dubai with the Guptas, has played various roles in the family’s numerous business ventures, which included transactions worth millions of rand.
McGowan’s company Centaur Ventures Limited (CVL), based in Bermuda, which advanced R842m towards the purchase of Optimum was a joint venture that involved Akash Gargh, a bridegroom at the infamous Sun City Gupta wedding.
This is the reason the national director of public prosecutor (NDPP) is fighting tooth and nail in a court bid to have Optimum Coal Mine forfeited to the state. The Mpumalanga-based mine is the Guptas's most significant business asset remaining in the country. The mine is in the hands of business rescue practitioners (BRPs).
One court application relates to the shares of McGowan’s Templar Capital’s shares in Optimum, which he was gifted by the Guptas, while the other relates to Tegeta’s shares in Optimum Coal Terminal and the mine’s business.
McGowan had withdrawn from opposing the first application just six days after outgoing NDPP investigative directorate head Hermione Cronje filed an affidavit stating McGowan was “an enthusiastic participant in commercial ventures” of state capture involving the Gupta family, including his role in the acquisition of the mine.
On Tuesday, during a virtual hearing in the high court in Pretoria, the NDPP’s Matthew Chaskalson argued that the mine near Middelburg was acquired by the family with the proceeds of crime and corruption involving the looting of state-owned entities (SOEs), including a pension fund belonging to Transnet workers.
Chaskalson said some of the money advanced by CVL could be traced back to SOEs, including the Transnet Second Defined Benefit Fund, which lost R56m.
Chaskalson said McGowan had “repeatedly” filed an affidavit before a Bermuda court confirming that the money from the Gupta-linked company was part of the proceeds of crimes against the SA state and that the money that came to his company was part of a money laundering scheme.
He argued that if their preservation application aimed at seizing the Gupta-owned coal mine was not granted the mine would fall into the hands of McGowan who had a “pedigree of state capture”.
The matter is now being opposed by business rescue practitioners Kurt Robert Knoop and Johan Louis Klopper, and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which represents the majority of employees.
“The BRPs want this court to back off so that they can give him [McGowan] a R2.4bn asset that was one of the assets that was the primary target of the original state capture crimes,” stated Chaskalson.
He accused the BRPs of trying to ensure that McGowan got the mine's entire coal business for R1.
“That’s a business which is impossible to value because coal prices as we speak are hitting record highs in the wake of the Russian/Ukraine crisis,” Chaskalson stated.
NUM’s Mpumalanga chairperson Bizzah Motubatse said their “position was clear” and that NUM was not happy with the timing of the NDPP’s court action, which they believed threatened jobs and delayed the reopening of the mine.
Motubatse said meetings had been held with the mine’s creditors, the BRPs, community and worker representatives, including unions on transferring ownership of the mine to McGowan who “was definitely going to save jobs”.
“The NDPP, by coming now with this court application and saying the mine was bought with proceeds of crime, they're taking us back as the mine is about to be sold to McGowan. And why did they wait until all these processes were completed?” Motubatse asked.
The matter will be back in court on Thursday.
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