Gupta associate Iqbal Sharma, his wife Tarina Patel-Sharma and one of his companies Issar Capital have had the restraint order on their assets worth millions of rands capped at just under R25 million.

National Director of Public Prosecutions Shamila Batohi sought confirmation of the June 2021 provisional restraint order granted by then Free State High Court Judge Soma Naidoo.

Sharma’s assets under the provisional restraint order include his famous Sandton mansion—valued at over R12 million and once featured on lifestyle show Top Billing—which is owned through UAE-registered Issar Global.

The order also covers a R1.3 million sectional title property in Sandton and movable assets worth R500,000.

Properties owned by Gupta family company Islandsite Investments 180, which is under business rescue, include a house worth R21m in Constantia, Cape Town and a R12m house in Saxonwold, Johannesburg.

Sharma, his company Nulane Investments 204, ex-Free State Agriculture heads Thabethe and Moorosi, Gupta representative Ragavan, and Sharma’s brother-in-law Dinesh Patel all face multiple fraud and money laundering charges.

They were acquitted by the high court in April 2023 but in June this year the Supreme Court ordered that they “may be retried for the same offences in respect of which they were acquitted by the Free State High Court on April 21, 2023, as if they had not previously been arraigned, tried and acquitted: provided that a different Judge shall preside over the trial“.

The charges relate to Nulane Investments being awarded the R25m contract to conduct due diligence and feasibility studies into the R334m Vrede Dairy Farm Project, part of the broader Mohoma Mobung Programme, run by Indian company Estina on behalf of the provincial agriculture department.

Independent Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC) spokesperson, Henry Mamothame, did not respond to questions on when the criminal matter will return to court on Thursday.

Patel-Sharma is not among the accused in the criminal matter but is the third respondent in the restraint order case.

While Batohi sought to have the provisional restraint order confirmed Islandsite Investments’ business rescue practitioners Kurt Knoop and Johann Klopper wanted it capped at the R24.5m paid to Nulane by the department.

In the criminal matter, the accused face two charges of fraud and one of money laundering relating the R24.5m fraudulently received from the department by Nulane and two payments of R8.8m and R10.2m to the company’s Bank of Baroda account.

The payments were based on an illegitimate agreement between Nulane and Gateway, a Gupta-owned company, which received about R19.1m.

Acting Judge Henco de la Rey set a clear limit on Sharma’s frozen assets.

Instead of freezing everything indefinitely, the court capped the amount at about R25 million plus inflation since 2011, plus another R19.1 million also adjusted for inflation. This finalises the temporary asset freeze that Judge Naidoo first put in place back in June 2021.

Acting Judge de la Rey said he could not ignore the profound impact of the unrestricted restraint order on all the parties but especially lslandsite.

“The very purpose of business rescue is to facilitate the rehabilitation of a company, and maximise the likelihood of the company continuing to exist on a solvent basis. What possible purpose can the business rescue achieve if lslandsite is effectively, by virtue of the unlimited restraint, prevented from ever achieving this goal?” he asked.

According to Acting Judge de la Rey, the granting of an order in terms of section 133 of the Companies Act, which places a moratorium on legal proceedings against a company under business rescue, allowed the asset forfeiture proceedings, effectively denies lslandsite any breathing space whilst attempting rehabilitate it.

He said the continued unlimited restraint order makes any possible business rescue unachievable.

loyiso.sidimba@inl.co.za

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