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The Estina dairy farm turned out to be a source of income for a select few individuals. (Conrad Bornman, Netwerk24)
- A director in Shadow World Investigations told Zondo commission on the complex flow of money from the Estina dairy farm.
- Paul Holden testified for the second day before the commission.
- According to Holden, Estina was allegedly used as a facade, even before the dairy farm project started.
Paul Holden, director of investigations at Shadow World Investigations, continued to provide explosive testimony at the Zondo commission on Friday, detailing complex financial records linked to Gupta with the flow of money from the Estina dairy farm.
Shadow World Investigations is a global organization that investigates cases of grand corruption.
Testifying before Supreme Court Vice President Raymond Zondo, the chairman of the commission, Holden showed the commission a diagram of a “complicated circular movement of funds.”
According to Holden, the public funds were used to pay off the loans obtained from Oakbay Investment.
He said that when the Free State government first made deposits in Estina, the money was immediately placed in a fixed deposit account.
The money was left untouched for a period of more than a year, he said.
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He said that in 2012, when Estina had to “develop and deliver a dairy farm,” the company began to incur certain costs.
And, to finance those costs, Kamal Vasram, the sole director of the company, obtained a series of loans from Oakbay Investments and Aerohaven Trading, which were immediately paid to Estina and used for various costs.
But the loan was paid off with public funds that came from the Free State government, he said.
“None of the funds transferred from Oakbay to Kamal Vasram is derived in its entirety from Oakbay Investments, it is just an advance of the Free State payments.”
When the leader of the evidence, advocate Matthew Chaskalson, asked why the money, which appeared to come from the Oakbay loan, went through Vasram and then to Estina, Holden said: “The only possible reason I could think of is to create a degree of confusion in tracking funds, to create a distance between Oakbay and Estina, so that when a researcher looks at Estina’s Standard Bank account, for example, they will see a wide range of transfers from Kamal Vasram, who is the Estina’s sole director.
“The [Vasram] You could argue, at that point, that, ‘Look, I’m putting my own funds into this company,’ whereas if you had Kamal Vasram’s bank account, you’d realize, actually, that it’s not any of his funds, it’s Oakbay. money.”
READ ALSO | My God! Bank statements reveal how the Free State government paid Guptas more than R330m for the Estina dairy farm
Aerohaven, also a Gupta company, in which Ronica Ragavan (loyal to Gupta) was the lead director, also paid loans to Vasram, the commission heard.
Holden previously told Zondo how the dairy farm was allegedly used as a front to launder money.
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.
Holden said the total amount that 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.
Holden claimed that the 287 million rand was “laundered” three times, and eventually the money deposited in Estina amounted to 880 million rand.
It also revealed that Estina was used for alleged money laundering, even before the dairy farm project started.
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