[ad_1]
Vice President of the Supreme Court Raymond Zondo.
Veli Nhlapo, Gallo Images
- Zondo’s commission of inquiry into the state capture has delved into the money flows from the Estina dairy farm abroad.
- A Shadow World Investigations director of research, Paul Holden, told the commission that Estina, linked to Gupta, was used to launder money.
- He said money was laundered in a “complex way through a circular system.”
Zondo’s commission of inquiry into the state capture has heard how the Gupta-linked Estina dairy farm project was allegedly used to launder money.
Paul Holden, director of investigations for Shadow World Investigations, a global organization that investigates grand corruption cases, testified about the Guptas and their various offshore companies that they allegedly used to launder cash “through a very complex system.”
Estina was identified in early 2012 as the company that would partner with the Free State government on the dairy farm project.
At that time, the plan was for Estina and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development to inject an investment of R500 million into the project.
The department then launched the project with R30 million for Estina, but the money continued to flow into Estina’s coffers, News24 previously reported.
The contract was canceled in August 2014.
READ | The case against Ace Magashule in the R280m Gupta Estina dairy farm scandal
On Thursday, Holden said that the total amount the Free State government paid Estina was R280 million plus R7 million in interest.
The money was paid in eight separate installments between July 9, 2012 and May 5, 2016, it added.
Washed
Holden claimed that the 287 million rand was “laundered” three times and eventually the money deposited in Estina amounted to 880 million rand.
And only R35 million [3.9%] of that amount did not come from the Free State government, he said.
“It may even be a smaller amount,” Holden added.
However, the chairman of the commission, Vice President of the Supreme Court, Raymond Zondo, said: “I thought that the evidence that I heard under Estina suggested that the amount was much less than 96% of these R880 million. So what you are saying It is only of these R880 million. About 3% percent did not come from the government of the Free State?
“That is quite a large amount. I have the impression that all the time, the amounts that have been mentioned were 200 rand. [million] and something “.
READ ALSO | Gupta’s wedding under scrutiny as IRBA concludes discipline of former KPMG auditor
In response, Holden said that the 287 million rand was the amount paid to Estina with gross interest.
“And the figure we reached of R880 million is the R287 million plus an additional amount that is effectively extracted from the R287 million that is so complexly laundered through a circular system that ultimately returns the funds to Estina, which increases the added deposit “.
He added that this is referred to in money laundering terms as a “round trip,” “where funds are paid from the account to the second account and potentially to several different accounts before being returned to the original account to create the impression that there is a separate cash flow. “
