Just when you think you’ve started to wave goodbye and good riddance to the Guptas, new owners of a swanky R450 million home in Dubai, something like this pops up and you realise just how extensive their reach really is.

The latest development is that the family are now suing Independent Media for a 27,5% ownership of the group, all stemming from a pact allegedly agreed upon back in 2012.

More below from City Press:

The dispute centres on a pact that the company’s chairperson, Iqbal Survé, made with the Guptas in 2012, when a consortium he led was negotiating to buy the newspaper group.

Survé conditionally offered the Guptas a stake that would have amounted to 27.5% of the Independent group.

Under the agreement, the Guptas would also have appointed Independent’s top managers, well-placed sources told amaBhungane.

But the deal was not consummated and, for the better part of three years, the Guptas and Survé have been locked in a dispute that included a protracted secret arbitration process.

Not happy with owning ANN7 and staffing it with rank amateurs (not to mention the farce that is The New Age newspaper), they now want to have a say in how one of SA’s most prominent newspaper companies operates.

Of course that ‘pact’ back in 2012 centres around monetary gain:

In 2012, Survé and his Sekunjalo group led a broad-based consortium that bought Independent from its Irish owners for R2 billion.

The deal was supported by the Public Investment Corporation, which said in Parliament this week that it committed R888 million on the premise that the new, black owners would attract a bigger share of state advertising.

But according to the investment corporation’s presentation to MPs: “This increased spend by government has not materialised yet.”

The case is currently running at the North Gauteng High Court, and you can find all the nitty gritty details HERE.

[source:citypress]

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