Gupta lawyer brands NPA 'highly incompetent'
Lawyers representing the controversial Gupta family have slammed the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) as reckless, highly incompetent and desperate.
Gupta lawyer, advocate Mike Hellens, told the Free State High Court on Thursday that the National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) came to the conclusion that the money transferred into the bank accounts of members of the Gupta family were proceeds of crime - without properly tracing the flow.
The controversial family have approached the Bloemfontein court to have a preservation order of about R180 million in assets set aside.
Law enforcement agencies allege that the Guptas misappropriated funds in the Estina Vrede Dairy Farm Project.
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"Do they even understand banking?" Hellens asked the court.
"We cannot answer a case which is confused and incompetently pleaded."
According to Hellens, the NPA failed to show that the government funds ended up in the pockets of the Gupta brothers.
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He told the court this proves that the NPA is reckless in "pointing of the finger of blame of criminality".
"There are lines of reasoning and inferences being drawn between various desperate facts."