Role of law firms under scrutiny

Under the heading, Gupta Inc: The Lawyers, the Daily Maverick has launched a new series that examines the role lawyers have played in the state capture saga at the behest of the Gupta family. In focus in a lengthy first article is Stein Scop, a law firm that boasts of its work for ‘financial institutions, major industrial and commercial operations (both listed and unlisted) and a range of high net worth individuals'. It was one of the firms representing Trillian, a company linked to the Guptas via its main shareholder, Salim Essa. The DM says it has established that Trillian moved in excess of R80m through the firm’s trust account. Now investigators want to know where it went from there and for what purpose. While Stein Scop is by no means the only firm that worked for Trillian during the period in question – in fact, it could even be said that the firm really came in at the back end – some of its Trillian files make for an important first port in the hunt for assets, suggests the report. Stein Scop has confirmed that it is ‘interacting’ with a court-appointed curator insofar as his mandate extends to Trillian legal work they previously performed. However, it pointed out it no longer acts for Trillian or the Gupta companies, and that it did only normal legal and commercial work for those companies; it has no concerns about the integrity of its work for those companies; and it would be comfortable co-operating with investigators tracing Trillian assets within the confines of the law. The DM says it has reliably learnt that the money trail between Stein Scop and some of Trillian’s service providers will be up for scrutiny.