Johannesburg - South Africa's Oakbay Resources & Energy, a company controlled by businessmen close to President Jacob Zuma, is investigating five of 72 transactions reported to authorities as suspicious.
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has revealed in a court affidavit distributed by the Treasury on Sunday that R6.8 billion in payments made by wealthy brothers Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta, companies they control, and other individuals with the same surname have been reported to authorities as suspicious since 2012.
The three Indian-born businessmen are the subject of an official investigation into allegations that they have had undue influence over President Jacob Zuma.
The payments in question, whose destinations were not disclosed in the document provided by Gordhan, were ascribed to the three brothers, their nephew Varun Gupta, numerous companies that they control as well as other individuals named as Chetali Gupta, Shivani Gupta and Arti Gupta. Reuters could not establish whether all these individuals were members of the same family.
Gordhan's court submission caps a week of high drama in which he was charged with fraud by approving early retirement for a deputy commissioner in 2010 while Gordhan was head of the tax agency and re-hiring him as a consultant - a charge that Gordhan said was politically motivated.
Gordhan has for months been at odds with Zuma, not least over the alleged political influence of the Gupta brothers, but is looked to by edgy financial markets as a guarantor of stability.
REUTERS