“Guptas used money from irregular contracts with state to buy Optimum Mine Holdings”

Director of Investigations at Shadow World Investigations, Paul Edward Holden, has told the State Capture Commission that the Guptas used money that they got from irregular contracts with the state to buy Optimum Mine Holdings.

Holden is continuing on the flow of funds evidence.

In 2016 Gupta owned company, Tageta Resources paid R 2.1 billion to buy Optimum. In evidence earlier this week, Holden testified that government spent over R57 billion on state capture contracts involving the Guptas.

“The Gupta enterprise used criminal funds derived from state capture to purchase the assets and that’s Optimum through a system that effectively sees criminal money from the state being used as a source of finance advanced to the Gupta enterprise. And the Guptas then used these criminal funds to pay the bridging fund that had been raised from criminal funds earlier. The end is that the state end up paying for over half this asset.”

He adds that Centaur Ventures (Bermuda) grants a loan facility of R1.5bn to Centaur Mining South Africa using
the Griffin Line funds. #StateCaptureInquiry

— State Capture Commission (@StateCaptureCom) June 25, 2021

#StateCaptureInquiry pic.twitter.com/wPTF7d2JvJ

— State Capture Commission (@StateCaptureCom) June 25, 2021

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