{"id":182683,"date":"2017-06-29T14:33:16","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T12:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=182683"},"modified":"2017-06-29T16:30:11","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T14:30:11","slug":"sexwale-quits-trillian-as-yet-another-gupta-state-capture-report-is-released","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/182683\/sexwale-quits-trillian-as-yet-another-gupta-state-capture-report-is-released\/","title":{"rendered":"Sexwale quits Trillian as yet another Gupta state capture report is released"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Trillian chairman, Tokyo Sexwale has announced his resignation from the company&#8217;s board, following the release of an external investigation into allegation that the company and its director, Gupta business partner Salim Essa, have been involved in capturing the state.<\/p>\n<p>At a press briefing on Thursday, Sexwale laid out the<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/352517602\/Budlender-Report-Trillian-Capital-Partners#from_embed\"> findings of the investigation<\/a><\/strong> carried out by\u00a0Advocate Geoff Budlender, noting that it was incomplete as Trillian, Essa and other implicated individuals stonewalled attempts to get necessary information and statements.<\/p>\n<p>The investigation was launched after an article was published by The Sunday Times, blowing the lid on alleged corrupt activities around Trillian Capital and its directors.<\/p>\n<p>The company has been implicated in many of the Gupta family&#8217;s business dealings, including being linked to state-owned companies like Transnet and Eskom, and being paid for contracts worth hundreds of millions of rands, and not doing any work.<\/p>\n<p>According to information received by the Sunday Times by a whistleblower, is has been claimed that Trillian executives knew of former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene&#8217;s firing, and the appointment of Des van Rooyen to replace him, long before it was announced.<\/p>\n<p>Sexwale said that he took immediate action &#8211; within 12 hours &#8211; of hearing the claims, and sought and external investigation because he wanted to approach it seriously.<\/p>\n<p>According to the report released today:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Trillian failed to make good on promises to investigate the claims against it;<\/li>\n<li>The company, and Essa, refused to hand over information relevant to the investigation;<\/li>\n<li>The company did not allow access to electronic devices to held determine the veracity of claims made against the company or its CEO or directors;<\/li>\n<li>There are strong links between Essa, Trillian, and the Gupta family, particularly when it comes to financial dealings.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Unfortunately, because Budlender has no authority to subpoena people or demand documents, his reach was limited in the investigation, hence it is incomplete.<\/p>\n<p>Because of this, Sexwale renewed his call for the matter to be elevated and investigated further &#8211; renewing his call for the judicial commission of inquiry into state capture to be established to get to the bottom of things.<\/p>\n<p>He said that Essa has refused to meet with him, and has also attempted to have him removed from the board. However, Sexwale said he made a promise to step down once Budlender&#8217;s report was released, and that time has come.<\/p>\n<p>The businessman said that state capture was doing immense damage to South Africa and the ANC.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This corruption of state capture related to a particular family. It is destroying my organisation (the ANC),&#8221; Sexwale said. &#8220;There is a policy conference starting tomorrow. It is destroying that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said that the state has not been &#8216;captured&#8217; so much as &#8216;handed over&#8217;.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read:\u00a0<a title=\"Permalink to Connecting the dots: how Zuma and the Guptas\u2019 state capture is structured\" href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/176677\/connecting-the-dots-how-zuma-and-the-guptas-state-capture-looks-in-south-africa\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Connecting the dots: how Zuma and the Guptas\u2019 state capture is structured<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trillian chairman, Tokyo Sexwale has announced his resignation from the company&#8217;s board, following the release of an external investigation into allegations that the company and its director, Gupta business partner Salim Essa, have been involved in capturing the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":141089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-182683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-active"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182683"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182757,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182683\/revisions\/182757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}