Lamola: SA and UAE setting up a task team on Guptas’ surrender

Justice Minister Ronald Lamola and his Emirati counterpart have agreed to set up a technical task team to review South Africa’s failed bid to secure the extradition of Atul and Rajesh Gupta.

The agreement was reached at a meeting between Lamola and Abdullah Sultan bin Awad Al Nuaimi in Dubai on Monday where, according to well-placed sources, the minister was frank in conveying his disappointment at the decision not to surrender the brothers. 

The justice ministry received a note verbale on 6 April confirming that the Dubai court of appeal had some six weeks earlier dismissed the request for the Guptas to be extradited to stand trial for state capture crimes.

“During the meeting, Minister Lamola expressed his concerns about the status of fugitives and the court’s findings. He suggested measures that could be taken to facilitate successful extradition and emphasised that this is a matter of national interest for South Africa,” Lamola’s office said.

“The UAE [United Arab Emirates] has undertaken to put in place all the necessary measures to meet its international obligations and assist and support South Africa in its quest to bring justice to the Republic of South Africa and the UAE.”

Lamola and Al Nuaimi agreed that a joint task team of prosecutors from South Africa and the UAE would be set up to go through the extradition process ‘’afresh’’ and to consider a request for further mutual legal assistance.

The task team would meet on 15 June, Lamola’s office said.

“The UAE has undertaken to put in place all the necessary measures to meet its international obligations and assist and support South Africa in its quest to bring justice to the Republic of South Africa and the UAE,” it added.

The task team will meet virtually, whereas in the past the UAE has insisted on written communication between the countries’ central authorities on justice, exchanged via diplomatic channels.

This change will make for more direct, nimble interaction on matters of mutual legal assistance, Lamola’s spokesman Chrispin Phiri, said.

The minister and the national director of public prosecutions, Shamila Batohi, have suggested that the reasons advanced in the court ruling for rejecting the request were spurious. 

The application was based in the main on the fraud and money-laundering charges set out in the Nulane Investments case. It formed the basis for the Interpol red notice, which led to the Guptas’s arrest in Dubai in June 2022. 

The court found that the arrest warrant for the brothers on fraud and corruption charges had been cancelled, and that as far as those of money-laundering were concerned, the UAE had jurisdiction to prosecute the alleged crime.

“The central authority in the UAE and the prosecutors in the UAE confirmed that all our papers were in order.  So, from our side we complied and that is why we are bemused by this judgment that cites technicalities. We find it shocking that such a technicality has been cited when all these efforts were made by us.”

Batohi said the issue of the warrant cited by the court could have been easily resolved, had it been raised.

“It was not complicated. The first warrant did not include all the charges. As responsible prosecutors, these were then amended in order to make sure that all of the charges were included in the second warrant and the first warrant was then cancelled because it was no longer applicable. 

“So the fact that the UAE court has now regarded this as a critical issue, and one of the reasons for in fact denying the application is something that is confusing.”

Lamola said the respective financial intelligence centres would review the money-laundering charge.

“Establishing this task team will allow them to collaborate closely to ensure the fair administration of justice. This is a positive step towards strengthening the partnership and achieving their shared goals.”

South Africa’s hopes to have the Guptas returned to South Africa have been further complicated by the fact that they have in the meanwhile become citizens of Vanuatu. South Africa has no agreement on mutual legal assistance with the Pacific Ocean island state. 

But it is understood that the UAE remains the main base of their business operations. 

The trial of the Guptas’s alleged co-conspirators in the Nulane case ended in dismissal in April, but the National Prosecuting Authority has applied for leave to appeal the ruling.