Mystery creditor demands R3bn from Gupta firm, Shiva Uranium

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Durban - A mystery creditor is demanding R3billion from Shiva Uranium, one of the companies owned by the controversial Gupta family. This comes as Atul Gupta’s wife Chetali Gupta successfully asked the North Gauteng High Court to remove business rescue practitioners at two of the family’s other companies, Islandsite and Confident Concept. Chetali Gupta is an equal 25% shareholder of both companies with her husband and brothers-in-law Ajay and Rajesh “Tony” Gupta. Shiva Uranium’s business rescue practitioners Chris Monyela and Juanito Damons said they were finalising documentation required for the determination of the R3bn claim. In terms of the Companies Act of 2008, business rescue practitioners must determine whether a creditor is independent; request a suitably qualified person to independently and expertly appraise and value the creditor’s interest; and give written notice of the determination, or appraisal and valuation, to the persons concerned at least 15 business days before the date of the meeting to be convened to determine the company’s future.

Three expressions of interest to buy the company, which has been under business rescue since February 2018, have so far failed.

In a report dated January 31, Monyela and Damons said the offers were received between October 2019 and last month, but the three interested entities had failed to submit proof of funding for the transaction.

This was after two prior attempts to sell Shiva Uranium were unsuccessful.

Monyela and Damons are expected to publish Shiva Uranium’s business rescue plan on Friday, after requesting the Independent Development Corporation, which is a creditor after it loaned another Gupta company, Oakbay Resources and Energy, R250 million to buy the uranium mine in 2010.

”The business rescue plan will take into consideration all the offers received by the business rescue practitioners,” Monyela and Damons said.

National Union of Mineworkers Matlosana regional secretary Masibulele Naki told Independent Media that there were 79 employees at the mine after last year’s retrenchments. The union had held a meeting with the business rescue practitioners, but had not held talks with them so far this year.

Chetali Gupta asked the high court to remove Islandsite and Confident Concept business rescue practitioners Kurt Knoop and Johan Klopper and force them to provide her with monthly reports, details of the two companies’ assets that have been sold, their prices, all costs and disbursements incurred in these sales, and all fees and charges paid to them, as well as monies paid to creditors.

In December, in the North Gauteng High Court, Deputy Judge President Aubrey Ledwaba, Judge Nicoline Janse van Nieuwenhuizen and Acting Judge Marcus Senyatsi removed Knoop and Klopper as Islandsite and Confident Concept’s business rescue practitioners.

Political Bureau