<\/p>\n
Judgment has been reserved in the first state capture-related fraud trial, after the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) headed to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) on Friday where they attempted to revive the bungled multimillion-rand Nulane Investments fraud matter. <\/span><\/p>\n This comes after all accused in the Nulane Investments case were acquitted of the fraud charges – amounting to R24.9 million – on a Section 174 of the Criminal Procedure Act during 2023.<\/span><\/p>\n At the Bloemfontein High Court, Judge Nompumelelo Gusha withdrew the charges against former Free State government officials Peter Thabethe and Seipati Dhlamini, businessman Iqbal Sharma and his brother-in-law Dinesh Patel, Gupta enterprise employee Ronica Ragavan, and companies Islandsite Investment One Hundred and Eighty and Nulane Investments. <\/span><\/p>\n The matter relates to the Free State government’s payments to Nulane for a feasibility study that led to the controversial and failed Gupta-linked Vrede dairy farm project.<\/span><\/p>\n The ruling was based on a Section 174 discharge, which is granted when the accused proves that the State had failed to make its case. <\/span><\/p>\n NPA\u2019s Investigative Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC) spokesperson, Henry Mamothame, said the State believes that the high court judge erred on the question of law in a number of areas.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe accused are facing charges of fraud, money laundering, and the contravention of the Public Finance Management Act. These charges relate to a contract valued at approximately R24,9 million, which was awarded to Nulane Investments to conduct a feasibility study on a project that was sanctioned by the Free State Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. The State believed that the trial judge erred materially.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe SCA bench cemented the correctness of their belief in the manner in which key legal issues were ventilated and questions asked. The State must ensure that justice is served and hopes that this appeal shows the people of the Republic that state capture and corruption cannot go unpunished, and where this seems a likely scenario, then it has to follow the legal recourse available. We await the court’s judgment,\u201d said Mamothame. <\/span><\/p>\n During 2023, Gusha found that the State had failed to tie alleged Gupta-linked Sharma and his co-accused to any of the crimes related to the Nulane case as they failed to \u201cpass even the barest of threshold; prima facie proof\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n She also ruled there wasn\u2019t a shred of evidence that pointed to one accused, the former head of agriculture in the Free State, Limakatsho Moorosi, being implicated in the crimes.<\/span><\/p>\n According to the judgment, the NPA prosecution failed to meet even the barest of thresholds and commitment of collusion. <\/span><\/p>\n In her judgment at the time, Gusha said \u201cthat the manner in which this investigation was conducted is a comedy of errors would be the understatement of the millennia\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n Taking her scathing acquittal judgment further, Gusha said: \u201cWhat this court instead heard was the ineptitude of the investigators and indeed the lackadaisical manner in which evidence and disputed documents were handled and a government department who seemingly evinced a wilful disregard to the manner in which official documents were to be kept and archived. Just on these aspects only, the State’s case, as presented, was still-born.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHaving had regard to the evidence led, this count (money laundering) and the decision I reach is probably the single most count that will invoke a sense of loss, if not dejection, to the citizenry of this country. It is an inescapable fact that almost R25 million of taxpayers’ money left the fiscus. The question that remains is why and who facilitated this. Regrettably,<\/span> <\/span>the institutions responsible to answer those questions failed.<\/span>\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n chevon.booysen@inl.co.za<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Judgment has been reserved in the first state capture-related fraud trial, after the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) headed to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) on Friday where they attempted to revive the bungled multimillion-rand Nulane Investments fraud matter. This comes after all accused in the Nulane Investments case were acquitted of the fraud charges […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[17901,14429,7449,17902,1903,7432,17903,15603,1111],"class_list":["post-234306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-politics","tag-039comedy","tag-acquittal","tag-capture","tag-errors039","tag-fights","tag-npa","tag-nulane","tag-overturn","tag-state"],"yoast_head":"\n