Cape Town — Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi says Atul and Rajesh Gupta are still citizens of the country and still using their Southe African passports.
At a news briefing on Friday, TimesLIVE reported Motsoaledi as saying that they are using their SA passports but Home Affair’s movement control system can’t identify which countries they are entering.
“They have these passports, they’ve got citizenship of South Africa which was eventually determined through parliament that they got it irregularly. There was an official from home affairs who was punished. By the time parliament arrived at that determination, the official had already left home affairs for another department.
“I personally wrote a letter to that department to tell them this person was party to giving the Guptas early citizenship,” the report quoted the minister as saying.
However, Motsoaledi added that it would not be preferable for the country to revoke their documentation.
“We can’t take back the passport before we take away the citizenship. We have to start there. We are chasing them because we believe they belong to us. So if we take away that citizenship, do we still have any right?,” he said.
ALSO READ | The Guptas: The brothers at the heart of South Africa’s graft storm
South Africa learnt only last week that the UAE had turned down its request to extradite the two brothers accused of orchestrating industrial-scale corruption.
Justice Minister Ronald Lamola said that the extradition hearing had been concluded in the Dubai Court on 13 February 2023.
The Citizen reported that a démarche served to UAE‘s ambassador to South Africa, Mahash Saeed Alhameli will see him having to answer questions about how the notorious Gupta duo were released from jail after a Dubai Court of Appeal rejected SA’s extradition request.
The Daily Maverick reported that teams from the Department of Justice, Dirco and the National Prosecuting Authority visited Dubai a number of times since June 2022 and were told by the UAE that the brothers had been placed under arrest. However details of their arrests were never provided.
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Compiled by Junaid Benjamin
