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The revelation left both the chairman of the commission, Supreme Court Vice President Raymond Zondo, and evidence leader Adv Matthew Chaskalson stunned and questioning his background.
“From what we can discern in the Gupta leaks [a series of leaked e-mails] is that the [Prasad] he was a junior or personal assistant to a former Indian intelligence officer, “Holden said.
In 2019, the commission heard evidence of former farm department head Peter Thabethe, who said the provincial government did not conduct background checks on employees, including Prasad.
He claimed that when he inquired about this, he was informed that Prasad had worked for an agricultural department in India.
Holden revealed that Prasad was paid a salary of more than R3m, which he described as “quite substantial.”
Investigations also found that Prasad’s visa was arranged through the Gupta companies.
“We also see him interacting with various employees of the Gupta company trying to advise them on how they can obtain certain security or diplomatic clearances in India. I imagine part of the reason he was hired was to facilitate those kinds of contacts, ”Holden told the commission.
Holden showed how the Gupta family allegedly ran “a complex money laundering scheme”, which saw the Free State government investment for the overseas farm after it skyrocketed to more than R880m.
Holden also took the opportunity to clarify the figures after incorrect reports that the family stole almost 800 million rand of public funds.
“The R800m refers to the aggregate tank; That is, all deposits have been made to Estina accounts. The importance of that figure is that we can show that all transfers constituted those R800m; the vast majority was extracted from the original R280m deposited by the government of the Free State, ”he said.
Holden submitted evidence in the form of Excel spreadsheets containing data on financial ledgers, containing information on money transfers in euros, US dollars, rand and dirhams.
Chaskalson pointed out that the diagram presented showed that the money appeared to come from a loan from the bank accounts of the Guptas Oakbay company, then went to Estina’s director, Kamal Vasram, and finally Estina.
He asked Holden to suggest why this might have been.
“The only possible reason I can think of is to create a degree of confusion by tracking the funds, creating a distance between Oakbay and Estina so that when an investigator looked at Estina’s Standard Bank account, for example, they would see a range of transfers … “he said.
The complex transfers could allow the farm manager to argue that he had invested his own funds in the project.
The evidence also revealed how large sums of money from Estina flowed to the UAE-linked companies of Gupta, Linkway Trading, Accurate Investments, Fidelity Enterprises, Global Corporation, Vargafield and Gateway Ltd.
Holden is expected to continue to provide evidence related to the Gupta companies and the Transnet capture Monday night.
TimesLIVE
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