If the commission’s investigating team is correct, there were two prongs to the Guptas’ efforts to ‘capture’ the company. 

One was allegedly via Alexkor’s core diamond business, as part 1 of this series detailed. 

Read All that glitters: how state capture hobbled Alexkor
Plus #GuptaLeaks: A tale of two captures – Alexkor, Gupta Inc and ‘WMC’

The other was allegedly aimed at the company’s plans to pivot to coal mining — a new diversification strategy that coincided with the installation of the new board. 

The origins of the coal strategy are unclear, but the ever-enterprising Gupta family appears to have sniffed out opportunity in Alexkor’s proposed new venture. 

Over the next few years, spanning two boards and two ministers, Gupta-linked companies allegedly began circling Alexkor’s proposed coal business, which would have made Alexkor a preferred agent for supplying Eskom.

We know from the #GuptaLeaks that as early as 2014 the Guptas approached Eskom about a supply contract from their Brakfontein coal mine — an interest that in 2015 culminated in their takeover of Optimum coal mine in a deal that went to the heart of state capture.

The remnants of the Guptas’ interest in Optimum are now the subject of a titanic court battle between the Investigating Directorate (ID) of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), the business rescue practitioners currently in control of Optimum, and Daniel McGowan, the former Gupta associate who is poised to take over the mine.

The case put forward by the ID suggests McGowan was a proxy for the Guptas and a channel for their massive money-laundering operation — though he denies this.

That assertion is important for the Alexkor saga because McGowan was also positioned to be a key player in the coal gambit via his Gupta-funded Centaur group.

The lure of coal

When Gigaba appointed the new Alexkor board in 2012, he made Rafique Bagus the chair. 

Bagus wasted no time trying to get Alexkor’s hands dirty with coal.   

In the foreword to Alexkor’s 2013 annual report he made a case for the new strategy, pointing to the “critical and significant shortfall in strategic coal supply” facing Eskom.

 “We can significantly contribute to the development of new coal supply sources by utilising mining methods, processes, technologies and skills that are well within our current core capability,” Bagus said in the annual report. 

Alexkor planned to partner with emerging black-owned mining companies. 

The state-owned diamond miner had been in poor financial health for years, and with emerging miners clamouring for access to Eskom coal deals, there was a case to be made for diversifying Alexkor’s business. 

Kgathatso Tlhakudi, director-general of the department of public enterprises, told amaBhungane that “at face value it looked like a legitimate strategy to pursue”.  

He said that empowerment was a key consideration and that the turn to coal was about how to “create space for a much more organised access to Eskom for emerging miners”.

But more cynical considerations may have been behind the turn to coal. 

The commission’s investigators allege Gigaba “was engaged in the restructuring of SOE [state owned entity] boards, which became broadly representative of ‘Gupta-Zuma’ interests”. 

Both Gigaba and his successor, Lynne Brown, have denied any such manipulation, but Tlhakudi told amaBhungane that the era of Gupta-linked state capture “was one of the weakest periods for us [as a department]. We had lists that literally would come from only god knows where for the appointment of boards”.

An affidavit submitted to the commission by one of its senior investigators, Peter Bishop, lays out how Alexkor fits his account of the pattern of Gupta-linked state capture: a new minister would replace an SOE’s board with individuals linked to the Guptas or willing to favour them; a major new project would be announced; and tenders would be awarded to politically-connected companies despite clear conflicts of interest. 

Bagus, the affidavit suggests, was key to the Guptas’ plans, and was in regular contact with the Gupta brothers and their close associates. 

Bishop’s affidavit points to approximately 60 phone calls from 2008 to 2013 between Bagus and former Transnet board member and Gupta business associate Iqbal Sharma. 

Bagus allegedly made contact with Gupta agent Ashu Chawla about eight times between 2008 and 2013, with Ajay Gupta 26 times between mid-2015 and early 2016, and with Rajesh Tony Gupta about seven times over a similar period. 

Bagus also attended the infamous Gupta wedding at Sun City in 2013, while he was chair of the Alexkor board. 

Responding to questions, Bagus said he did not recall Chawla, but admitted his familiarity with the Guptas and Sharma. He said he knew Sharma from their time together at the department of trade and industry, adding “I have had several engagements with him over the years, mostly social”.

“As a former civil servant I am often called for advice. I have not discussed my work at Alexkor with any of these people.”

Gigaba did not respond to detailed questions. He wrote back saying only that “I responded to everything that implicated me at the Commission. I stand by every word I made there. I suggest you get hold of my responses so that I don’t get myself dragged into a second and unofficial commission process”. 

At the Commission, Gigaba denied being captured by the Guptas, saying Bagus had been appointed on the basis of “a very good record in the public service”.

Regiments again 

After the coal supply strategy was announced, a company called Regiments Capital was quick to make overtures to Alexkor. 

We now know that Regiments and the Guptas appear to have hunted as a pack, so the sudden appearance of Regiments adds to suspicions about a Gupta ploy. 

On 1 October 2013, the month after the new coal strategy was publicly unveiled, Alexkor’s chief executive, Percy Khoza, received an email from a Regiments employee. Regiments’ executive director and Gupta associate Eric Wood was copied in. 

The email related to a draft non-disclosure agreement between Regiments and Alexkor. The Regiments employee ended off saying: “Once finalised, we would be in a position to receive and review the master coal supply agreement.” 

Khoza forwarded the email to Zarina Kellerman, Alexkor’s newly-appointed chief legal officer. 

Two days later, Kellerman sent an email copying all those in the original email, in which she said she wanted to send through an Eskom master coal supply agreement in advance, “on your word of course that you would keep its contents confidential”.

After sending through the Eskom agreement and receiving a response from Regiments, the non-disclosure agreement concerning “financial advisory and other services to Alexkor by Regiments” was signed by both parties. 

Kellerman did not respond to written questions.

Khoza told amaBhungane, “The Guptas never initiated anything on the coal strategy at Alexkor but hijacked what was being driven by the executives and the board.”

Regiments was also in discussion with Alexkor about a request for proposals for the appointment of a panel of financial service providers to Alexkor. 

Alexkor sought service providers to, among other things, assist with crafting its new coal strategy, identify acquisition opportunities in line with that strategy, provide transaction advice, risk management, and capital raising. 

According to the email correspondence, Regiments had been chosen to prepare the request for proposals. 

The following year, on 14 January 2014, Kellerman wrote to Regiments saying: “We will be putting out the tender shortly for financial advisors but for now, I am advised that we require your assistance on something specific.”

That “something specific” was a separate job to provide unspecified due diligence advice and asset and investment valuations. A fee proposal for the new job was the circulated among Regiments staff and forwarded by Wood to Gupta lieutenant Salim Essa. 

On 16 January, an edited consulting agreement was sent back to Kellerman.

The affidavit by Bishop, the commission’s investigator, zeroes in on the fee structure that Regiments was proposing, claiming that “the proposal put forward to Alexkor was designed solely to benefit Regiments”.  

It is unclear what happened with this arrangement.

However, Alexkor continued to pursue the tender for financial advisors which Regiments had helped to design (recall that Regiments had been tasked with drafting the request for proposals).

In an act that Bishop labels “totally irregular”, Regiments then submitted its own proposal in response to the request it had helped design. 

An unsigned letter dated 31 January 2014 and addressed to Kellerman contained the subject line: “Appointment to the financial services panel of Alexkor”. It stated that “Regiments Capital… is pleased to submit the accompanying proposal for the above-mentioned tender.” 

A June presentation to Alexkor’s tender committee includes Regiments as one of the bidders, but later that year Regiments’ plans were dealt a blow.

Khoza, the chief executive, asked the board to place a moratorium on the tenders for the legal and financial panel of advisors pending the final approval of the coal strategy.

Regiments’ plans may not have reached fruition, but the Guptas and their associates appear to have been trying other routes to access Alexkor and insert themselves in its coal plans. 

Enter Centaur and McGowan

In January 2015, a Bermuda-registered investment company called Centaur Holdings posted a news bulletin on its website. 

The company announced that that it had “completed a funding package through a wholly owned subsidiary (the “Company”) for IPC Coal (Pty) Ltd and IPC Mining (Pty) Ltd”. 

Centaur, which had previously funded IPC, would now fund an “undisclosed sum” to expand IPC’s mining operations at its Nungu colliery in Mpumalanga. Centaur also had an option to acquire an equity stake in IPC. 

Centaur’s bulletin might have gone unnoticed were it not for what it suggests about Gupta interests in IPC — and perhaps Alexkor.

Already in 2014, the Guptas showed an interest in adding the same colliery to their burgeoning business empire. 

Included in Bishop’s affidavit is an email from August of that year sent from key Gupta executive Ravindra Nath to Tony Gupta, with the subject “information required”. The email contains a list of information required in connection with the Nungu colliery, including off-take agreements and a coal supply agreement with Eskom, information about mining rights, and “approval of coal wash-plant”.

Was McGowan simply a stalking horse for the Guptas?   

Researcher Paul Holden has laid out in forensic detail Centaur group companies’ role at the heart of Gupta offshore financial flows — its name looming large in thousands of pages of annexures detailing Gupta networks which form part of Holden’s submission to the state capture commission.

Holden alleged that Centaur group companies were used to launder some of the Gupta-linked criminal proceeds used to purchase Optimum coal mine.

Holden’s analysis is central to South African civil litigation challenging McGowan’s status as the preferred bidder to take Optimum out of business rescue, claiming his status as the company’s largest single creditor is fatally tainted by dirty Gupta money.

In papers responding to the challenge McGowan rejects these allegations. 

He avers, “Holden has ‘followed the money’ from the Guptas backward, and inferred that everyone who engaged with them acted in bad faith and is complicit in money laundering. For my part, and that of the companies in which I have been involved, that assumption is not true.”

McGowan, who is now embroiled in a series of legal battles with alleged Gupta proxies in Bermuda, claims Centaur group companies engaged with companies owned or controlled by the Guptas or their associates “on a good faith, arm’s length commercial basis”. 

“The transactions we concluded were real (not simulated) and for value. We conducted proper due diligence and ‘know- your-client’ checks before each transaction was concluded, and had no reason to believe that the monies we were loaned or paid were the proceeds of crime. (Indeed, that is still not clear to date.) We were not party to money laundering, or state capture of any kind. I was unaware of the Gupta’s agenda to capture the State and, as evidenced by the Bermuda litigation, it is plain that I am actively fighting against companies owned or controlled by the Guptas and/or their associates.”

But is all of this true?

McGowan & the Guptas

McGowan’s own reported account on the Arabian Business website in 2016, suggests his early business career was rather patchy — until, that is, he teamed up with the Guptas, their associates and their cash.

McGowan’s court papers set out that during September 2012 he and his erstwhile business partner, Simon Hoyle, formed Centaur Asset Management in Bermuda, with an initial focus on litigation funding.

It was Hoyle (who has since fallen out with McGowan) who knew Gupta lieutenant Salim Essa “through a previous professional relationship”. 

Essa introduced Centaur to Rajesh “Tony” Gupta who explained that the Guptas were keen to investigate joint ventures with the Centaur Group.

According to McGowan, in late 2013 the Guptas offered Centaur an opportunity to invest and develop the De Roodepoort mine in Mpumalanga, though the project never took off.

“It was… in relation to this project, that Centaur… became involved with the Guptas and Mr Akash Garg. Akash Garg became a director and 50% shareholder of CVL from 2014 to 13 August 2018.”

CVL refers to Centaur Ventures Limited, a company registered in Bermuda on 18 July 2014.

Garg, of course, is the person who married the Gupta brothers’ niece Vega at the infamous 2013 Sun City wedding.

The shareholding of Centaur Ventures was split 50/50 between Garg and Centaur Holdings.

Centaur Holdings was owned in equal share by McGowan and Hoyle — until 2016 when Hoyle was ejected.  Holdings’ assets, including its 50% share in Centaur Ventures, were transferred to another company, Centaur Group Limited, which was under McGowan’s sole control — leading to the fallout with Hoyle.

Centaur Ventures owned 100 percent of a Mauritius-based Centaur Mining, which in turn fully owned a South African company by the same name. 

Directors of the South African company included Garg, McGowan and Gupta associate Deepak Raswant. Raswant is described in evidence before the commission as “a frontman for the Gupta Enterprise in India” and has featured in previous amaBhungane reporting.

Raswant later replaced Garg as director of Centaur Ventures. 

It was this string of companies, Holden told the Zondo commission, that was used to launder the Guptas’ illicit funds offshore and channel money into South Africa.

Centaur and Optimum 

A dubious Centaur “loan” to the Guptas enabled their infamous takeover of the Optimum coal mine — one of their prized South African assets. 

Centaur’s role in the Optimum scandal was first detailed in the Public Protector’s State of Capture report. Released in 2016, the report named Centaur as one of the entities that contributed to the purchase price of Optimum. 

Holden has shone more light on Centaur’s role. In an affidavit for Zondo, Holden shows that the Centaur loan ultimately derived from $100-million loaned from Gupta company Griffin Line to Centaur Ventures (CVL). 

“In June 2016, somewhat after the fact, Centaur Holdings posted a news update on its website. The news update announced that Centaur had secured a ‘$100 million credit deal with UAE-based family office.’”

“It is clear that this referred to the $100m loan granted by Griffin Line to Centaur Ventures”.

In his recent court filings McGowan has tried to suggest this was a bona fide transaction: “CVL entered into a Loan Facility Agreement with Griffin Line General Trading LLC on 15 February 2016… CVL did not attempt to hide this; in fact CVL issued a press release in June 2016 publicly stating that it had signed a USD100m facility.”

Yet the 2016 statement hid the fact that the “family” was the Guptas, who had skipped South Africa for Dubai in April that year. 

And McGowan’s claim to be unaware of the Guptas’ state capture agenda stretches credulity.

By then their role as politically exposed persons was already established in SA and even internationally. As early as December 2015, Bloomberg had carried a story quoting analyst Nic Borain saying, “There is a very widespread acceptance and assumption that this goes beyond undue influence. This goes close to capture of political authority by a group of foreign businessmen.”

The further progress of the Gupta $100-million seems to defy innocent explanation. 

As set out by Holden, Centaur Ventures would then loan R1.5-billion to Centaur Mining. Of this amount, Centaur Mining drew down R885-million which was placed in a fixed deposit account in April 2016. 

That money was used to back a Bank of Baroda loan of a similar amount (R842-million) to Gupta-owned Tegeta to fund the Gupta-owned company’s takeover of Optimum from Glencore.

Both Holden and the NPA allege that the purpose of this back-to-back loan arrangement was to launder illicit money derived from state capture, taking it out of South Africa via the UAE, and recycling it back into the country “to expand [the Guptas’] local empire to take advantage of State Capture”. 

In short, money from the Gupta state capture project was laundered through their company, Griffin Line, which provided the source for the Centaur loans that were used to purchase Optimum. 

The falling out

Is McGowan a bona fide businessman unluckily caught between the Guptas and the NPA?

Or was he a presentable white male front who helped the Guptas move their ill-gotten gains around the world and then hoist them on the petard of their own laundry vessel when things fell apart?

What is certainly true about McGowan’s account is that he is “actively fighting against companies owned or controlled by the Guptas and/or their associates”.

After the Guptas’ state capture network began unravelling, the family and McGowan had a messy falling out.

Optimum, which was placed in business rescue in 2018 along with several other Gupta-associated companies, is at the heart of an ongoing legal battle in Bermuda between the Guptas and McGowan.

Centaur Ventures’ only significant assets are the monies it is owed by Gupta-linked companies and individuals, the largest being its R1.38-billion claim as a “creditor” of Optimum.  

In the Bermuda supreme court, Griffin Line, represented by Ajay Gupta’s son Kamal Singhala, is suing McGowan’s companies for a total of $104,127,604.72 (plus continuing interest).

The Guptas are also seeking to block McGowan gaining control of Optimum following a business rescue plan that would see his R1.38-billion claim converted into equity in a restructured Optimum. 

McGowan hopes to take control of Optimum through his company, Templar Capital, which holds the R1.38-billion claim after Centaur Ventures, which he controlled, transferred it to him in mid-2020, just a week before the Bermuda courts issued freezing order against Centaur Ventures in relation to the Optimum claim.

Enter the NPA

But McGowan’s hopes of taking over Optimum may be dashed by the NPA’s Investigating Directorate, which earlier this month launched a High Court application for a preservation order over the mine. 

The NPA wants the property preserved pending the outcome of a forfeiture application. 

It alleges that the R1.38-billion claim ceded to Templar constitutes “either proceeds of unlawful activities or instrumentalities of the offence of money laundering or both”.

The NPA is of the view that Centaur and McGowan were an important conduit in the Guptas’ money laundering network. 

In a detailed financial analysis, the NPA corroborates evidence before the Zondo commission, suggesting that the R1.38-billion is made up of tainted funds from different sources linked to the Gupta state capture network. 

Centaur Ventures’ claim (now Templar’s) is based on ostensible coal pre-payment contracts that the NPA suggests were fictitious attempts to “paper” transactions.

The NPA contends that the contracts were not at “arm’s length” and contained “extraordinary anomalies”, suggestive of having been “reverse engineered” to fit payments that had already been made.  

Through the pre-payments, says the NPA, laundered money was pumped back into the domestic Gupta enterprise via Optimum “with a view to propping up Gupta family entities within South Africa”. 

Repeatedly in two affidavits before the Johannesburg high court, the NPA cites McGowan in an affidavit he himself placed before the Bermudan courts: “it is highly likely that the revenue and profit reflected in Griffin’s audited accounts is money stolen from the South African government and laundered via Mr Singhala on behalf of his father and wider family members”.

The implication is that McGowan admits he benefitted from stolen funds.

McGowan has not yet had an opportunity to respond formally to the NPA application, but he told the Sunday Times last week he denied the NPA’s allegations and was “confident that the NPA will be paying us damages at the end of the day”.

In the separate civil proceedings concerning the Optimum business rescue plan, McGowan disputes that the coal pre-payments were illicit.

He says that the business rescue practitioners initially did not recognise CVL’s claims, but changed their minds after an accounting firm was brought in to independently verify the claims. 

McGowan contends that the payments were not fictitious and that some coal that CVL paid for was in fact supplied.  

Back to Alexkor

If the NPA is correct, then McGowan and Centaur were an important element of the Guptas’ money laundering network.

Where Alexkor is concerned, the seemingly cosy relationship between Centaur and the Guptas suggests that Centaur’s interest in IPC and the Nungu colliery may have been linked to the Guptas’ wider coal gambit.

Centaur’s business venture with IPC ultimately went under. Paul Erskine, a director of IPC Benefication and IPC Mining, said that Centaur was going to put up R25-million to develop Nungu and ended up contributing around half that amount by the time the project sank.

There is, however, a clue hinting at a Gupta link in litigation that was brought by three of IPC’s creditors, two of which — Centaur Asset Management, founded by McGowan and his former business partner Hoyle, and Nungu Ltd — were related parties.

Nungu Ltd was registered in the British Virgin Islands and was to be a vehicle to fund the IPC venture and receive profits from it.

Nungu Ltd in turn received money from the segregated account of Centaur Group Finance Ltd (CGF) — a Bermuda company in which McGowan and Garg were directors. 

According to CGF’s financial statements, on 1 January 2015, the same month Centaur announced the IPC deal, Nungu Ltd entered into a loan facility with the segregated account of CGF. 

The statements reflect related party loans to Nungu Ltd and Centaur Ventures Ltd of $2,096,483 and $624,594 respectively, and note that the loan facility to Nungu Ltd was terminated and would be repaid in June 2016. 

The Nungu-IPC plan collapsed, but Alexkor itself later began eyeing IPC assets — this time under a new board and a new minister. 

Lynne Brown had replaced Gigaba, and in August 2015 appointed a new board under Hantsi Matseke, the Free State Development Corporations (FDC’s) chair and alleged “long-time ally of ANC Secretary-General, Mr Ace Magashule”. 

Two years later, in 2017, plans were set in motion to establish Alexkor’s coal arm, Alexcoal. 

IPC Benefication, a related company to IPC Coal, signed a non-binding MOU with Alexkor in May, in terms of which a new company would be formed, 55% owned by Alexkor with the remainder owned by IPC. 

The new company, Alexcoal, would purchase a coal washing plant on land owned by IPC, with the aim of becoming a coal supplier to Eskom. The coal would be sourced from neighbouring coal mining operations including Nungu. 

According to a business case for the new venture, “Alexkor made a decision that it will not be involved in the mining of coal but will work with emerging coal miners to assist them to beneficiate their coal to the required standard.”

It is unclear whether Alexkor’s plans for IPC were tied to either the Guptas or Centaur. After all, there was a significant time gap between Centaur’s 2015 announcement of its IPC funding package and the Alexcoal MOU. And by February 2017, Centaur was a co-applicant for the liquidation of IPC Coal. 

The state capture commission’s investigators, however, were confident that the Guptas intended to repurpose Alexkor and turn it into a conduit for their coal interests. 

Bishop’s affidavit states: “The Commission’s investigating team have established that the entire coal deal was part of a Gupta linked and associated network of companies, positioning themselves to control Alexkor coal business.” 

Centaur, in responding to the allegations in Bishop’s affidavit that suggested a link between their IPC funding plans and Alexkor’s later plans, said that Bishop had drawn “incorrect conclusions” by “utilizing the inclusion of companies with similar names into his report”. 

IPC Benefication, said Centaur, was the company that supposedly stood to benefit from Alexkor, and was a different company to the IPC mentioned in the Centaur news bulletin. Centaur accused Bishop of conflating different companies solely because the company names contained the same initials, “IPC”. 

Responding to follow-up questions, Centaur told amaBhungane that “Neither Centaur Holdings Ltd (“CH”), nor any of the companies within the Centaur Group of Companies have had any business dealings with IPC Benefication”.

Going nowhere

Like Centaur’s plans, Alexkor’s big coal strategy ground to a halt. 

The Alexcoal MOU was signed in the same month the Guptaleaks blew the lid off the Guptas’ corrupt business empire. The political tide was shifting greatly, and it appears from correspondence before the commission that the following year the new minister, Pravin Gordhan, blocked Alexkor’s coal plans in line with a moratorium on the acquisition plans of state-owned companies. 

For a short time earlier this year, Alexkor was the subject of high-level scrutiny at Zondo. Overwhelmed by the caseload and having run out of time, the commission did not delve deeper into the issue. 

The company continues to hobble along after years of mismanagement, alleged state capture, and infighting. In September 2019, it was placed in administration.

The administrator’s report to parliament depicted a company in critical decline. 

The biggest victims in all of this, as usual, are ordinary people. For nearly a century the inhabitants of the Richtersveld, where Alexkor has its operations, have had their riches sucked out of the earth beneath their feet with barely anything to show for it. 

Things do not look set to change any time soon. 

The post The Guptas and coal: how state capture hobbled Alexkor, part 2 appeared first on AmaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism.

In a 10 December statement the Special Investigating Unit announced an investigation into allegations of maladministration in the affairs of state-owned diamond miner Alexkor. 

President Ramaphosa signed the proclamation authorising the investigation, which “will focus on maladministration in respect of marketing, valuation, sale and beneficiation of diamonds, pursuant to agreements concluded between Alexkor and service providers.”

“The proclamations authorise the SIU to use all its legislative powers to subpoena bank statements and cellphone records, search and seize evidence, and interrogate witnesses under oath in an effort to hold those responsible to account for their actions.”

“Classic state capture,” is how Gavin Craythorne described events at diamond miner Alexkor — events that made the state-owned company the subject of scrutiny at the state capture commission in January this year.

Craythorne is a marine diamond miner — one of many who operate as small-scale contractors for Alexkor. He has been a thorn in the side of Alexkor executives for years now, describing himself as a whistle-blower calling attention to the rot and capture of the state diamond miner.

Appearing before the commission, Craythorne detailed allegations of how Alexkor’s plans to expand into coal mining were part of a ploy by the Gupta family to benefit their companies.

He also elaborated on longstanding allegations that the Guptas attempted to capture the Alexkor diamond marketing chain through a company called Scarlet Sky Investments (SSI).

But over time he paid a heavy price: shut out of mining concessions, slapped with a defamation suit by SSI and finally forced to sell his ocean diamond mining vessel.

To his detractors, he is driven by ulterior motives.

When it comes to Craythorne, SSI’s director Daniel Nathan doesn’t mince his words, claiming Craythorne “is motivated only by his desire to profit from the marine mining activities in Alexander Bay and his desire to somehow acquire the marine mining rights or the proceeds thereof for himself”.

[sidebarContentSingleImage target=modal url=https://amabhungane.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2.png]A diamond boat floats in the Port Nolloth harbour, 03 September 2021, (Photo: Barry Christianson).[/sidebarContentSingleImage]

Nathan, through his lawyers, told amaBhungane that allegations that SSI was involved in state capture are “untrue” and “defamatory”.

Yet some parts of Nathan’s own account of what happened appear questionable, as we shall see.

The Alexkor matter appears to have fallen by the wayside at the commission, which has had to deal with evidence related to a dizzying range of state-capture cases and was beset by delays.

This has left questions about SSI’s appointment and its links to Gupta associates hanging over the company and Alexkor.

So too are there unanswered questions around the coal strategy (unrelated to SSI), and what appears to have been, in that case, an audacious plan to expand the Gupta state capture machine.

There is an important tale in all of this not only about the machinations of high-level state capture, but in what it means for ordinary people in an impoverished corner of the country, the remote, barren Richtersveld.

Though the coal plans were ultimately thwarted, the infighting and Machiavellian politics of the state capture years left Alexkor and its joint venture with the local Richtersveld community in disarray.

The Pooling and Sharing Joint Venture (PSJV), owned 51% by Alexkor and 49% by the community, is the effective custodian of the mineral wealth that belongs to the community and should have been its crown jewel, but ordinary people have seen little in the way of diamond wealth trickle down to them.

Craythorne is by no means the only victim in a saga that has left a community divided and a company in disarray.

Diamonds in the rough

The Northern Cape diamond mining coast has the feel of a rough and tough frontier — arid and dusty, and dotted with small decrepit towns endlessly battered by the Atlantic winds.

For nearly 100 years the state has been mining diamonds on this corner of the country. Though South Africa is no longer the leading global producer of diamonds that it once was, the industry remains important, especially for local employment.

In the late 1990s the community lodged a claim to the narrow strip of land along the West Coast known as the Richtersveld, which had been expropriated by the colonial state after the discovery of diamonds there in the 1920s. It was on this land that Alexkor had its mining operations.

Only in 2003, after a protracted legal battle against the state and Alexkor, did the Richtersveld community win its land back — and the mining rights that went along with it were later ceded to them. Alexkor was left with its marine mining rights.

In 2011, the PSJV was set up as a joint venture between Alexkor and the Richtersveld Mining Company, the community’s mining vehicle. It combined the community’s land rights and Alexkor’s marine rights, and became the vehicle through which the diamonds were sold.

Alexkor and the PSJV do no actual mining. Instead, it is outsourced to private contractors, mostly to small boat-based marine divers who dredge the seabed using hand-operated suction devices. The contractors deliver diamond-bearing gravel to processing plants and the diamonds are then sold by the PSJV with the help of a diamond marketer.

In November 2014, Scarlet Sky Investments submitted a tender to the PSJV to be the sole agent to market and sell its diamonds.

In 2018 AmaBhungane wrote about SSI in the wake of the #GuptaLeaks, detailing circumstantial evidence that it could have been a vehicle for the Guptas’ planned capture of Alexkor. There were vehement denials of any link to state capture.

Since then, however, Craythorne’s testimony at the Zondo commission, further information uncovered by Zondo investigators and amaBhungane’s own efforts have raised further questions about the Guptas’ designs on Alexkor and SSI’s role.

Back when it applied for the tender, SSI did not have a significant trading history — it was a shelf company bought for the purposes of the tender.

Online company records show that effective December 2014, Nathan was registered as a director alongside Kuben Moodley, with Moodley owning a 60% stake through his company Kimomode. The other 40% was owned by Nathan’s company, Daniel Nathan Trading.

Moodley is widely known as a Gupta associate whose company, Albatime, has featured prominently in media reports about Gupta-linked state capture. He has been accused of being a “fixer” for the family and was arrested in connection with alleged money laundering in September this year on his way to Dubai.

The alleged money laundering relates to the proceeds from contracts that were improperly awarded by state-owned Transnet to Gupta-linked consulting companies Regiments and Trillian.

On affidavit Nathan told the commission, “I have no relationship with Mr Moodley other than our previous association in SSI which ended in and during August of 2015. I have known Mr Moodley since approximately 2001 when we played golf together.”

He said that when he became aware of the Alexkor tender he contacted Moodley to come in as his BEE partner: ”I knew that he had the financial standing, business experience and acumen that would contribute to the business if the tender was successful.”

Two months after Moodley and Nathan were registered as directors, SSI had the tender in the bag when the PSJV board signed off on it, completing a questionable bid adjudication process, as amaBhungane has previously reported.

That marked the start of a bitter dispute over the SSI contract, with Alexkor’s partners in the PSJV and contractors like Craythorne crying foul.

Part of the problem lay in the unusual way in which the PSJV was set up, with the non-executive chairperson of Alexkor occupying the same position in the joint venture, whereas no executive from Alexkor sat on the PSJV’s board.

Percy Khoza, Alexkor’s chief executive at the time, said that he arrived at Alexkor to find that that the company’s memorandum of incorporation barred its executives from having direct oversight of the PSJV.

He said that the board’s chair, Rafique Bagus, allowed him to sit on the PSJV board as an observer, but Khoza had no vote and no ultimate control over what was essentially his main operating company.

Team Gupta on speed-dial?   

The Bagus board had been appointed in 2012 by Gupta-linked Minister of Public Enterprises, Malusi Gigaba, though Gigaba has denied being captured by the Guptas and told the Zondo commission Bagus had been appointed on the basis of “a very good record in the public service”.

But Bagus was well known to the Guptas and was among a long list of politicians and public officials who made pilgrimage to the Guptas infamous Sun City wedding.

Before, during, and after his time at Alexkor, which he left in 2015, Bagus had many phone conversations with the Guptas and their associates, according to an affidavit by an investigator for the state capture commission, Peter Bishop.

Bishop alleges that there were about 26 calls between Bagus and Ajay Gupta between July 2015 and March 2016, and about seven between him and Rajesh Gupta between May 2015 and March 2016.

There were approximately 60 calls between Bagus and Gupta associate Iqbal Sharma, currently facing charges of fraud and money laundering related to the failed Estina dairy scheme — one of the Guptas’ most notorious state capture projects.

The affidavit also mentions approximately eight calls between Bagus and another key Gupta associate — Ashu Chawla.

[sidebarContentSingleImage target=modal url=https://amabhungane.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/AmaB-Alexkor-Graphic-2.jpeg][/sidebarContentSingleImage]

Bagus, in response to questions, said he did not recall Chawla, but admitted his familiarity with the Guptas and Sharma. He said he knew Sharma from their time together at the department of trade and industry, adding, “I have had several engagements with him over the years, mostly social.”

“As a former civil-servant I am often called for advice. I have not discussed my work at Alexkor with any of these people.”

Bishop’s affidavit also alleges regular calls between Moodley and the chief executive of the PSJV, Mervyn Carstens.

Between September 2015 and May 2017 Carstens was allegedly in contact with Moodley 97 times.

For most of this period Moodley was not a director of SSI. He resigned in November 2015, but retained his shareholding through Kimomode until April 2017.

After resigning from SSI, Moodley went to work as an advisor for then minister of mineral resources, Mosebenzi Zwane, who has been implicated in the Guptas’ state capture project and was the Free State MEC of Agriculture at the time of the Estina scandal. As MEC, Zwane’s department had oversight of the project.

Alexkor’s chief legal officer, Zarina Kellerman, later joined Moodley as an advisor to Zwane.

Bishop’s affidavit also claims that Carstens was in phone contact with Gupta associate Stanley Shane about 10 times between February and July 2016.

Responding to questions about the calls, Carstens said:

“As for me calling Mr Moodley about 97 times, first and foremost I did not call him 97 times. He called me. If I missed his call, I called him back. I have no recollection of what was discussed on any of the calls with Mr Moodley… I had no reason to need to speak to him.”

“At one stage Mr Moodley was interested in becoming an actual mid-water mining contractor or purchasing an outfit and called me to enquire as to some of the background. I recall there were several conversations about this however eventually he did not put in any proposal and certainly made no purchases in this regard. It appeared to me that he had lost interest.”

Carstens said he did recall speaking with Moodley about golf, and that after the #GuptaLeaks and Moodley’s connection to the Guptas became “evident”, “I blocked his number and did not take his call or reply to any of his efforts to reach me”.

“Calling Mr Stanley Shane is also one of those things which I simply have no recollection of, however any conversations with him would have been around mining. As the CEO of the PSJV I got a lot of these calls on a daily basis.”

Shane was a director, together with Mark Chipkin and Mark Angel (who resigned in 2019), of a company that has been linked to state capture — Integrated Capital Management (ICM).

This company, Bishop’s affidavit reads, was “intimately involved with [Gupta associate Salim] Essa and the establishment of the Trillian Group of Companies, which was used to capture consulting work from Transnet and Eskom from the end of 2015”.

Innocent — or integrated?

Alongside Chipkin, Angel and Shane at ICM was Selwyn Nathan — Daniel Nathan’s father — whose role in the company is more obscure.

Daniel says in his own affidavit, “My father was the honorary chairman of ICM… [he] resigned from that position on 2 November 2015.”

However, a share register and declaration for December 2017 showed that a company of which Nathan senior was the beneficial owner still held a 21.97% share in ICM at that time.

It was Selwyn Nathan who arranged for a R50-million letter of comfort that Scarlet Sky relied on for its bid.

When ICM’s role in supporting Trillian was first exposed by former Trillian Management Consulting chief executive Bianca Goodson, the then attorney for the ICM grouping, Billy Gundelfinger, objected strongly.

In a 2017 complaint to the Press Ombud he said ICM was merely an “arms-length service provider” and emphatically denied that the company took part in any state capture actions.

Since then the linkages between people associated with the Guptas and people associated with ICM have become slightly clearer.

As early as July 2018 amaBhungane revealed ICM’s role in helping a shelf company linked to Essa extract R647-million from Transnet for changing the venue for local locomotive manufacture from Pretoria to Durban.

Goodson has also since given damning and seemingly unchallenged testimony at the Zondo commission in relation to ICM, alleging that Angel, in particular, was aware of the way in which Essa’s extraordinarily ambitious business model was based on exerting influence over decision makers.

This included Angel’s knowledge of a November 2015 email which set out Trillian’s plan to capture R10-billion in consulting income from Eskom over just three years.

Shane did not respond to calls and WhatsApp messages. Gundelfinger, on behalf of Angel and Chipkin, told us his clients had instructed him that they did not wish to engage with us.

Daniel Nathan, in his own affidavit to the state capture commission, has attempted to put distance between SSI and ICM.

According Nathan, ICM was brought in by SSI to “assist it in preparing and submitting its tender submission document to the PSJV”.

Nathan insisted, “SSl’s engagement of ICM was on an entirely arms-length and professional basis for the purposes as aforesaid.”

But was that true?

As we’ll see, Nathan’s attempt to rubbish Bishop’s state capture commission affidavit led him to proffer a bank document that he must have known contained misleading information.

That, unfortunately, may cast some doubt on his other assurances.

Selwyn Nathan, ICM, Investec and SSI  

The process by which SSI was selected as preferred bidder was problematic, an issue to which we’ll return, but it was approved subject to a due diligence check.

A due diligence and verification report on SSI’s and its bid was conducted by the CEO, Carstens, and Zarina Kellerman, the chief legal officer of the PSJV, and submitted to the board in late January.

But the due diligence exercise does not appear to have scrutinised the R50-million issue noting only that “Scarlet Sky has a bank guarantee of R50 million with Investec”

Had it done so, it might have picked up some anomalies.

Bishop’s affidavit notes that “the Commission has subsequently established that lnvestec has no record of any guarantee that was applied for and provided”.

Daniel Nathan hit back at Bishop’s claim in his own affidavit.

According to him, “my father advised [Bishop] that Investec Bank had provided a letter confirming that SSI was an Investec Bank client and that SSI had funds available to it of R50 million (fifty million Rand)”.

As proof of this, Nathan attached a January 2015 letter from Investec stating that it “confirms that Scarlet Sky Investments… is a client of Investec and holds various Investec accounts in their name”.

“We further confirm that as at the date of this letter, Scarlet Sky has an amount of R50,000,000.00 available in their accounts, for use at their own discretion.”

The problem for Nathan, however, is that the information appears to be false. SSI was not a client of Investec and held no accounts with the bank — something he must have known.

Investec told us, “Investec categorically denies any association with Scarlet Sky Investments 60 (Pty) Ltd (“Scarlet Sky”). Investec further confirms that Scarlet Sky was never a client of the bank and that it (Scarlet Sky) at no stage held any accounts with the bank.

[sidebarContentSingleImage target=modal url=https://amabhungane.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/alexbay_bc-11760-scaled.jpeg]The Alexkor diamond factory on the Alexander Bay coast. In the background excavators load rocks that were used to build a coffer dam onto trucks, 24 August 2021, (Photo: Barry Christianson.)[/sidebarContentSingleImage]

“A 2015 letter, intended to convey confirmation of the availability of funds on behalf of two long-standing clients, erroneously recorded that Scarlet Sky was a client of Investec. This was incorrect. Furthermore, the letter clearly stated that it was not a letter of guarantee. No payment was facilitated by Investec for or on behalf of Scarlet Sky.

“Investec has deposed an affidavit to the Zondo Commission of Inquiry detailing the misstatement of fact in the 2015 letter.”

Investec and the Nathans also part ways on the exact circumstances under which this “misstatement” came about but they both try to characterise it as not being material.

AmaBhungane sent questions to the Nathans regarding Daniel Nathan’s reliance on the Investec letter and the impression that there may have been an attempt to mislead the commission.

In response, their lawyers labelled our questions “consistent with (and are a further perpetuation of) your previous discourteous, accusatory, reckless and defamatory engagements with our client”.

Regarding the Investec Bank letter, the Nathans’ lawyers said it contained “immaterial inaccuracies (by Investec Bank and not our clients)” — and that there had always been sufficient funds available to SSI, inter alia through Selwyn Nathan’s relationship with Investec.

Round two 

SSI’s tender was initially intended to be a short-term gig, so in 2016 the tender process was renewed. Again, SSI was appointed, this time for 5 years.

By now, a new board was in charge. Bagus had resigned and been replaced by Hantsi Matseke, the Free State Development Corporations (FDC’s) chair.

There are traces of evidence in the appointment of SSI for a second term that suggest Gupta-linked Trillian had something to do with tender number two.

Two pieces of information suggest Trillian involvement.

The first is an email sent on 28 March 2016, two days before bids for the second tender closed, from a Trillian employee. SSI’s proposal for bid number 02/2016 — the second diamond marketing contract — was attached to the email and included Daniel Nathan’s CV.

The employee wrote in her email “I’ve done a grammar check and added the health and safety statement to the proposal. Please find attached all the information required… Please add pictures under the relevant sections and potentially use graphics to enhance layout.”

The second exhibit that points to Trillian involvement is slightly more feint — two emailed meeting notifications.

The first notification, with the subject “Diamond Tender discussion”, was scheduled for 16 March at 10:15 AM at ICM’s Melrose offices. It was sent by ICM’s Chipkin to Daniel Nathan, and two Trillian employees.

The second notification for a meeting on 22 March was sent to the same group of people.

The Nathans, through their lawyer, flatly denied that they knew the Trillian employees, or that ICM was in any way involved in the second tender.

“Mr Daniel Nathan has no links whatsoever to the Guptas or their associates,” they said.

One of the Trillian employees, who asked not to be named, told us: “Clive Angel, whom I met due to the move to Trillian, asked… if my colleague… and I could assist with collating a proposal for Scarlett Sky.

“Mr Angel introduced us to Scarlett Sky management, whose persons were previously unknown to me, at the ICM offices in Melrose Arch. Our role was to collate the proposal using information primarily provided to us by Mr Nathan, at the ICM offices. Once we were done, there was no further involvement from my side.”

More Gupta fingerprints

In amaBhungane’s initial story, we reported that only three people sat on the panel to decide on the final selection in the first tender — they were Bagus, longtime Alexkor director Roger Paul, and Duncan Korabie, one of the independent directors representing the community on the joint venture’s board.

Korabie gave SSI a full 100 percent score which, as our initial article noted, “is normally regarded as an attempt to skew a panel score in favour of one bidder”.

The issue of SSI’s scoring became even more charged when Korabie fell out with Alexkor. He later submitted a complaint to the Public Protector alleging various irregularities in the tender, despite his own 100 percent score.

Representatives of the community in the Richtersveld Mining Company, Alexkor’s partner in the PSJV, were also concerned.

After a complaint by the RMC in late 2015, Lynne Brown, who had replaced Gigaba as minister, tasked Alexkor’s audit and risk committee with investigating the tender.

The committee concluded its investigation and came back to the board in February to say that all was well. There were no major problems with the tender.

But based on what we now know, the committee either did not look hard enough, or was wilfully blind to the problems.

One of the three committee members was Trevern Haasbroek, whose appointment as a board member of Alexkor in August 2015 bore the Guptas’ fingerprints again.

In a now familiar pattern in the Guptas’ state capture enterprise, the month before Haasbroek’s appointment, minister Brown’s personal assistant sent an email to infoportal1@zoho.com. The address was prominent in the #GuptaLeaks and is now known to have almost certainly belonged to Essa.

The email, titled “Trevern’s CV”, is addressed to “Saleem” — clearly a misspelling of Essa’s first name. In it, the PA writes: “Herewith cv for Alexkor board as discussed”.

Haasbroek did not respond to a request for comment.

At the Zondo commission Brown denied influencing board appointments in favour of the Guptas and said she was unaware of her PA sending emails to the infoportal1 (Essa) address.

A festering sore

The SSI tender became a festering sore on the Richtersveld diamond mines.

Craythorne and some other marine diving contractors claimed that the company was ill-suited to the task of valuing, marketing and selling the joint venture’s diamonds.

They claimed SSI’s appointment was not transparent, that the company did not have the requisite experience, and that diamonds were being undervalued and miners short-changed.

Claims about the undervaluing of diamonds and anomalies in the diamond sales process have been laid out in detail at the state capture commission, and have been met with vehement and at times compelling refutations by both Nathan and the joint venture chief executive, Carstens.

Both have also pointed to detailed separate reports on the SSI operation issued by two diamond industry experts and another Alexkor mining contractor.

Sign-up to receive our free newsletter to make sure you can easily and instantly follow this investigation and others like it.

All three said that SSI appeared to run an effective marketing and selling operation that extracted good value for Alexkor – in contradiction to the claims by Bishop and Craythorne.

Nathan alleged the commission investigators had made grievous errors.

“[They] made statements of fact and have arrived at conclusions in their affidavits concerning me, SSI and DNT which are untrue, inaccurate and unsubstantiated, defamatory and reckless,” he said in his own affidavit.

His lawyers told us: “If, as you record, amaBhungane really wants to understand ‘what happened at Alexkor’ then perhaps you should be reporting on the fact that during SSI’s tenure as the entity to market, sell and beneficiate the PSJV’s diamonds, the PSJV’s diamond revenue from sales convened by SSI increased from R276 million in 2014 (the year prior to SSI’s appointment) to R414 million in year 1.

“AmaBhungane should perhaps be considering what became of this diamond revenue (which SSI actually generated in terms of its agreements with the PSJV) as opposed to unjustly interrogating our clients.”

That the Alexkor issue appears to have been left in limbo by the commission has not helped in getting to the bottom of a very complicated matter.

A more clear-cut problem, as far as the contractors are concerned, seems to be in the lack of transparency of the diamond sales made through SSI, which has only fuelled the contractors’ suspicions that they are being short-changed.

A report by forensic accounting firm Gobodo, which was submitted to the department of public enterprises in late 2019, underscores these concerns.

Though the report was criticised by Zondo for its sloppiness, it did raise some noteworthy points around the lack of transparency in the marketing and selling of the diamonds.

The Gobodo report claims that SSI kept important information about this classified, even from the PSJV, on whose behalf it was selling the diamonds.

In the rush to complete their report, Gobodo’s team appears to have made a number of errors and ignored some evidence that contradicted their findings.

One thing that stands out, however, is their findings concerning the assessments of the bids and how bidding companies were scored in the original tender process that selected SSI.

The report notes that the weighting of various categories of scores was changed after three bidders, including SSI, were shortlisted. Notably, the weighting of scores for local economic development, job and ownership commitments was reduced.

The report states that “the changing of the points and evaluation criteria is irregular and constitutes and unfair and uncompetitive practice”.

Between mid-2015 and mid-2019, the year before SSI’s contract was eventually cancelled, Gobodo calculated that over R1.5-billion worth of PSJV diamonds passed through Nathan’s company.

Given the huge turnover, the original 2014 procurement process that led to SSI’s appointment appears to have been, at best, extraordinarily amateurish.

Infighting

The relations between the small-scale contractors and the joint venture’s board and management became so strained that several contractors, including Craythorne, did not have their contracts renewed.

In January 2018, a team from the department of public enterprises (DPE) stepped in to attempt to resolve what had become an intractable conflict.

One of the issues that the contractors “raised vigorously” was the SSI contract.

The contractors also questioned the prices that the diamonds were fetching and the lack of transparency in the marketing and sales of the stones.

The DPE team compiled a briefing report of their engagements with the parties, which left no doubt as to who the team felt was more to blame for the falling out — it was scathing of the board and management team.

“There seemed to be a determination to manage by fear in order to drive home the message to contractors that no dissent shall be tolerated.”

The team found that the board had been “economical with the truth” when it claimed that its decision not to renew some mining contracts was based on a legal opinion.

They also drew attention to what was at stake for diamond contractors like Craythorne, who says he has now lost everything.

“The contractors have a substantial skin in the game. The contractor literally mortgages all they have to be on the sea during the sea days with an expectation that they will have a good mining day and be able to cover their costs.”

The problems that the department’s team had seen up close, only worsened. In September of the following year, Alexkor was under administration.

When, in 2020, the administrator reported to parliament on the state of Alexkor, he said many of Alexkor’s problems were traced to weak governance.

The administrator noted: “Because the PSJV is an Unincorporated Joint Venture, it has significant governance challenges, as it does not have to comply with the Companies Act and/or the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), neither has it adopted any of the best practices contained with either of the Acts mentioned above.”

Carstens, the PSJV CEO, relied on precisely this argument — that the joint venture was not beholden to the PFMA – to explain the decisions taken in appointing SSI.

“The allegations of apparent irregularities in the tender process stems from a mistaken view that the PSJV is somehow obligated to comply with the PFMA”.

“The PSJV most certainly had a procurement process which was adopted by the Board of the PSJV [which] allowed for the Board to be flexible in its approach.”

Others, including departmental officials, were uneasy with this freestyling approach.

The departmental team had said that the PSJV, “by virtue of the fact that it is an unregistered entity which utilizes Alexkor SOC Limited legal status to trade and conduct its business… is bound by the same standards of conduct expected of a state-owned business”.

“Moreso, as the resource that is being exploited by the affected miners is the marine diamond deposit whose mining right belongs to Alexkor SOC Limited and by extension the State.”

But to the state capture crowd, the loopholes created by the PSJV structure seemingly represented just another opportunity.

Years later Alexkor and its issues continue to drive a wedge through what was an already divided community.

On 19 May this year the parliamentary committee on public enterprises reported on their oversight visit to Alexkor, noting a concern about government’s failure to facilitate the election of legitimate community structures and a perception that they were still subject to divide and rule tactics.

Sign-up to receive our free newsletter to make sure you can easily and instantly follow this investigation and others like it.

The committee also consulted mining contractors on their challenges with Alexkor.

“The contractors raised a number of concerns which included the following: the company has been destroyed by corruption and state capture… There is high unemployment rate and lack of development programmes for young people in the community, and that has given rise to high levels of poverty, drug and alcohol abuse.”

The Richtersveld land claim settlement was supposed to deliver justice and development, but its intended beneficiaries seem to have been left as high and dry as the windswept dunes.

Read more investigations by Micah Reddy here.

The post All that glitters: how state capture hobbled Alexkor appeared first on AmaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism.