Hawks probe Guptas’ alleged ‘taxpayer-funded’ Sun City wedding

The Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation – better known as the Hawks – on Wednesday said it had initiated an investigation into the Guptas’ controversial Sun City wedding in 2013, which was reportedly paid for through laundered public funds from the Free State’s Vrede dairy project.

Acting Hawks head Lieutenant-General Yolisa Matakata confirmed the probe into the leaked Gupta emails as well as the wedding during a meeting of parliament’s standing committee on finance.

AmaBhungane and Scorpio reported in June that the Guptas’ Linkway Trading (Pty) Ltd, audited by KPMG, was key in ensuring the diversion of cash earmarked for the Vrede dairy project to reimburse most of the four-day wedding expenses – R30 million, to be exact.

On July 3, DA MP David Maynier lay criminal charges at the Cape Town Police Station against the three Gupta brothers and their business associates following the revelations contained in the leaked Gupta emails about the funding of the lavish wedding.

“The fact that public funds, which were meant to assist the poor, were allegedly used by President Jacob Zuma’s most important clients, the Guptas, to pay for a family wedding is grotesque and must be investigated by the South African Police Service,” said Maynier at the time.

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