The Guptas are refusing to surrender the aircraft, and the tracking device on the Bombardier jet has been switched off in an attempt to hide its whereabouts, the documents sayhandout
Despite a court order, Canada’s export agency has been unable to recover a US$52-million Bombardier jet from South Africa’s Gupta brothers, who have allegedly hidden the plane and could be using it for criminal activities.
The Guptas, the long-time business partners of ex-president Jacob Zuma’s family, are now fugitives from justice and subject to arrest warrants on corruption charges. But instead of complying with the court order to ground the Bombardier plane, they are gearing up for a potentially lengthy court battle against the federal Crown corporation, Export Development Canada (EDC).
While they seek leave to appeal the court order, the Guptas continue to control the Bombardier jet and have allegedly switched off the tracking device to make it impossible for the plane to be located. The plane has been flown between Dubai, India and Russia in recent months and EDC says it has no idea where the plane is located.
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To support Bombardier Inc.’s jet sale, EDC provided US$41-million in financing in 2015 to the Guptas, who controlled a sprawling business empire. The agency says the Guptas have defaulted on the loan. It is worried about its financial and reputational risks if the Guptas keep flying the Canadian-made and federally financed luxury jet.
In a court ruling in Johannesburg on March 19, a judge said there was a “pungent possibility” that the Guptas switched off the tracking device on the airplane so that the jet could be used for unlawful activities.
The judge ordered the plane to be returned to a Johannesburg airport and placed in safekeeping under EDC’s custody. She also ordered South Africa’s civil aviation authority to cancel the plane’s registration, preventing it from being legally flown.
But the aviation authority says it cannot act until the appeal process has finished. “We are ready, willing and able to deregister the aircraft with immediate effect,” said Kabelo Ledwaba, a spokesman for the authority. “However, we need to follow the right legal processes.”
There is a “general principle” that court rulings are automatically suspended until the completion of the appeal process, he told The Globe and Mail on Thursday.
An EDC spokesman, Phil Taylor, said the agency is contesting the Guptas’ right to appeal the court order. It has asked the court to confirm that the Guptas are “required to return the aircraft now or be held in contempt of court,” he told The Globe on Thursday.
He said he expects the appeal application to be heard in “a matter of days” so that the situation can be quickly remedied.
The Guptas, however, have a long history of fighting court battles for years, exhausting every legal avenue before giving in.
In its court application earlier this year, EDC said it urgently needed to “decouple” from the Guptas because of the risks to its reputation. “There is a very real concern that the aircraft may be used to escape justice or for some other unlawful means,” it said.
The agency’s critics, however, have argued that EDC failed to do a proper due-diligence review of the Guptas when it gave them the loan in 2015, at a time when there were already widespread reports of their involvement in corruption cases and other wrongdoing.
In their application to appeal the court order, the Guptas argue that EDC must have known of the allegations of illegal activity by the brothers because the allegations “had enjoyed widespread and frequent coverage in the South African and Canadian media” at the time of the loan in 2015.
Moreover, an investigation by a South African ombudsman’s office in 2016 had produced “serious allegations of wrongdoing” against the Guptas, yet EDC was “content to continue with their contractual association” with the Guptas, the application says.
Geoffrey York