South Africa Parliament's justice committee welcomes freezing of NRI Gupta family Assets about $130 million

Johannesburg, South Africa, Jan 16, 2018
NRIpress.club/Sohan Singh/Gary Singh

Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) started the process to serve a summon on the Guptas and freeze its assets.

The chairman of the committee, the African National Congress’s Mathole Motshekga, said: “The Committee expressed the wish that this process should continue without fear or favour…. Nobody is above the law.”

Parliament’s justice committee has welcomed news that AFU Authority’s Asset Forfeiture Unit has obtained the go-ahead to freeze assets belonging to the politically-connected Gupta family worth $130 million. If they are convicted, the assets are permanently forfeited to the State.

AFU sommoned Gupta-linked Trillian company and international consultancy giant McKinsey and identified 14 people and two companies involved.

NPA- National Prosecuting Authority's spokesman Luvuyo Mfaku said the action would be taken on the basis of an ex parte application that the NPA successfully brought in the Pretoria High Court under the Proceeds of Crime Act against the two companies last month.

“We are going to formally serve the court order on the parties,” Mfaku said.

Trillian offers efficient and long-lasting solutions to the public and private sector by merging cross-functional skills in the fields of business strategy and management consulting with specialist investment products.We challenge convention with market-leading techniques and analytics to create bespoke, targeted and progressive solutions through the five functional business areas in which we specialise, namely:

Trillian received about R500-million from Eskom, delivering little in the way of services in return and it has not agreed to pay back the money.

In terms of the law, assets can be frozen pending the successful prosecution on criminal charges or the successful application to court for the assets to be forfeited to the state on the basis that they are the proceeds of a crime.