News24.com | Nulane state capture trial: Investigating Directorate launches appeal bid after 'miscarriage of justice'

Iqbal Sharma, Seipati Dhlamini, Limakatso Moorosi and Peter Thabethe standing trial in the Free State High Court for fraud and money laundering.

• The Dubai Appeal Court refused to extradite Atul and Rajesh Gupta from the UAE.
• The brothers would have faced trial in Bloemfontein on charges that they laundered the unlawful proceeds of the alleged R24.9 million Nulane scam.
• The Investigating Directorate said that it would seek to appeal the decision on 10 different grounds.

The Investigating Directorate (ID) says the summary acquittal of all the accused in its first-ever state capture trial – the R24.9 million Nulane fraud and money-laundering case – amounts to a "miscarriage of justice" that must be appealed.

Acting Judge Nompumelelo Gusha made the decision in the Free State High Court in Bloemfontein to discharge all of the accused without requiring them to defend themselves.

But, in a statement on Tuesday, the ID said that it would seek to appeal the decision on 10 different grounds.

Among other things, the ID denied that it had failed to present prima facie evidence that would require an answer from the accused.

It said in the statement: "There are reasonable prospects that another court would come to a different conclusion and/or find that granting the discharge was a misdirection which was contrary to legal precedent, constituted a gross irregularity in the trial and was prejudicial to the State."

The ID will seek to appeal the Section 174 discharge to a full Bench of the same court.

It was the State's case that the Free State Department of Agriculture paid R24.9 million to Nulane Investment, a company owned and controlled by former Transnet Board member Iqbal Sharma, for a fraudulent feasibility study for the Free State's flagship Mohoma Mobung project – the genesis of the alleged Vrede dairy project scam – between 2011 and 2012.

Despite the fact that Nulane Investment had no staff, the department successfully motivated a deviation from procurement rules to appoint it to perform the feasibility study.

Nulane then subcontracted Deloitte, at a cost of R1.5 million, to do that work.

Nulane Investment is alleged to have subsequently changed the findings of the Deloitte-authored study to identify Paras – an Indian dairy farm allegedly linked to the Guptas – as the most suitable implementing partner for setting up a milk processing plant in Vrede.

The alleged Vrede dairy project scam, which would see millions of rands intended for poor black dairy farmers allegedly being diverted to the Guptas and their associates, was then born.

That alleged fraud and money laundering is itself now the subject of another criminal trial, in which former mineral resources minister Mosebenzi Zwane has been charged.

The State alleged that the Gupta family network, including its associate, Ronica Ragavan, and Islandsite Investments, was then involved in the subsequent laundering of the Nulane scam proceeds.

When Gusha ruled that the State had failed to produce enough evidence to show the Gupta network was implicated in money laundering, she said she knew her decision would "invoke a sense of loss, if not dejection, to the citizenry of this country".

She said:

Gusha added that the State's financial expert witnesses in the case had sounded the "death knell" for its case when they admitted that they had made mistakes in their assessment of the Gupta network's finances and conceded that there was nothing untoward about its money transfers.

The judge further slammed the police's failed attempts to properly secure documents relevant to the Nulane trial as a "comedy of errors" and lambasted the State for "the lackadaisical manner in which this case was investigated and approached".

"I can, therefore, not take this aspect any further than I have to save to conclude with the following African proverb: 'Haste and hurry can only bear children with many regrets along the way,'" she said.

The ID says that judgment was wrong and says there are "reasonable prospects that another court would find that the learned judge erred by making contradictory rulings which prejudiced the State when dealing with the issue of the admissibility of documentary evidence". 

Its statement further reads: 

"There are reasonable prospects that another court would find that the evidence presented before the court by the State called for a reply and that the accused ought to have been called upon to discharge their evidential burden."

Should the ID succeed in its appeal, the case will be referred back to Gusha to hear any defence that the accused may choose to raise.

They will have the option to close their cases without providing any such defence.