World closes in on Guptas – Lord Robin Renwick

South Africans have long been wondering why the Guptas were allowed to continue living lavishly and flaunting expensive weddings overseas with the taxpayers money that they extracted from their lucrative contracts with corrupt officials from the Zuma era. From their Saxonwold lair they decamped to a R445m mansion in Dubai to avoid arrest and prosecution. And now finally justice is starting to catch up with them with the decision of the US to place sanctions on the Guptas, described as “members of a significant corruption network in South Africa that had leveraged their political connections to engage in widespread corruption and bribery, capture government contracts and misappropriate state assets.” The South African Justice Department said the US was one of the seven countries they had approached for mutual legal assistance to have the Guptas extradited to face state capture allegations; the other are the UAE, China, Hong Kong, Canada and Switzerland. The former ambassador of the UK to South Africa, Lord Robin Renwick has long been a campaigner to bring the Guptas to justice and has written a book, “How to steal a country” which details the Gupta links to the Zuma kleptocracy. Speaking from London, he said explained how the world would suddenly become a lot smaller place for the Guptas, now that the US has zoomed in on them and Salim Essa. - Linda van Tilburg