ConCourt dismisses first state capture case appeals

The state has scored another victory in the R24.9m Nulane state-capture case linked to the infamous Gupta family. This after the Constitutional Court on Friday threw out a series of last-ditch bids from the accused to quash the Gupta-linked case, paving the way for the prosecution to proceed again, reports News24. The apex court found there were ‘no reasonable prospects of success’ in four separate appeal bids brought against the Supreme Court of Appeal's (SCA) June 2025 judgment, which found the accused could be retried. This after they were previously granted discharges and acquitted by the Free State High Court (Bloemfontein). The appeal bids dismissed were launched by Iqbal Sharma, the sole director and shareholder of Nulane; Dinesh Patel, Sharma’s brother-in-law and a representative of Nulane; Ronica Ragavan, co-director of Gupta company Islandsite Investments; and Peter Thabethe, the former head of the Free State Department of Agriculture. A fifth appeal bid, from Seipati Dhlamini, the former chief financial officer of the department, had not yet been finalised. The precursor to the Vrede Dairy scandal, the case centres on a R24.9m payment the department paid to Nulane for an allegedly 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. The Vrede Dairy Project scam saw millions of rands intended for poor black dairy farmers in the Free State diverted to the Guptas and their associates, including R30m for their infamous family wedding at Sun City.

This was the first state capture case to be heard and public expectations were high. Its loss by the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (Idac) in April 2023 was a massive blow. Acting Judge Nompumelelo Gusha slammed the investigation as a ‘comedy of errors’. In March last year, however, Idac appealed to the SCA, contending that Gusha made several material ‘mistakes in law’. That court’s subsequent ruling upholding the appeal was welcomed by Idac head Andrea Johnson, who said it vindicated the prosecution team – and proved that Gusha’s discharge of the accused in the case was defined by ‘gross errors’. 'The Idac and the state advocates who pursued this prosecution have always maintained there were gross errors in the judgment. It was also an emotional judgment,' Johnson told News24. In August last year, the accused approached the Constitutional Court, complaining that they were unhappy with the SCA having described the Gupta family as ‘infamous’, and charging that they had effectively been found guilty of crimes they had been acquitted of and would not receive a fair retrial. The SCA in its ruling had highlighted the Zondo Commission of Inquiry’s findings that the Gupta family was ‘involved in the corrupt capture of various government departments and state-owned enterprises in this country, to help themselves to the money and assets of the people of SA’.