Former magistrate and member of the Johannesburg Bar, Advocate Deon Pool, says considering the judgment on the lifting of the Gupta assets, the judge was very adamant in the fact that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) had failed to connect the dots.
This comes after Bloemfontein High Court judge, Phillip Loubser, ordered the lifting of an asset freeze on R250 million assets belonging to the Gupta family.
The freeze, granted in April, was on assets reportedly including cash, cars and a helicopter as part of an investigation into theft, fraud and money laundering at the state-backed Estina dairy project in the Free State.
Loubser said the NPA’s application for the asset freeze was marred by shortcomings.
Pool says all the NPA needed to do was to convince the court that a conviction might follow.
“The NPA needed to give the judge an indication as to what the case amounts to. The court doesn’t have to decide whether it is true or not, what the value of that evidence is but to simply just know that it is there and that the NPA is able to present it.”
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