Gupta brothers’ extradition requires president’s involvement: NPA

National Director of Public Prosecutions Shamila Batohi explained the challenges the National Prosecuting Authority has been facing to extradite the Gupta brothers back to South Africa from the UAE to face fraud and money laundering charges related to state capture.

“We have been trying very, very hard to find out some basic things. Like what exactly was the problem with our extradition request? We've not had satisfactory responses from the UAE. We've been trying to set up a meeting with the national director, the head of the prosecution authority in the UAE for us to understand this.

“We've not been able to schedule the meeting for months. The NPA executive decided we needed the president to intervene with the ruler of the UAE because we realised that unless there isn't a strong political push in the UAE, we're going to struggle with this matter,” said Batohi.

This was revealed during the NPA media roundtable with Batohi and the NPA executive team on Wednesday. 

The UAE rejected South Africa’s extradition request for the Gupta brothers due to it being “inconsistent with the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, to which both nations are a signatory”.

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