Ruinous Miscalculations
As the Gupta brothers prospered, they flaunted it.
They enlisted a top Bollywood actor, Anil Kapoor, to produce a 2007 movie they financed, “Gandhi, My Father,” touching on Gandhi’s time in South Africa. Both Mr. Mandela and Mr. Mbeki publicly showered the Guptas with praise.
In Saharanpur, the brothers invited 2,000 guests for the groundbreaking of the temple in their father’s memory. Among the big names was a close family friend, Baba Ramdev, the most powerful guru in India, often credited with helping bring Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power.
In 2016, with a fortune conservatively estimated at $800 million, the Guptas were South Africa’s seventh-richest family — the only nonwhite family in the top 10.
But two events — both, as it turned out, related to planes — contributed to their undoing.
In 2013, the brothers chartered a plane with about 200 guests from India to attend the extravagant wedding of a niece in Sun City, South Africa’s Las Vegas. They invited relatives, friends, businessmen and politicians, mostly from India.
“They needed to shout from the roof, ‘Hey, we have arrived,’” said Amar Singh, a political figure in the Guptas’ home province in India.
But the brothers miscalculated. Using their political connections, they landed the plane near Sun City — at a military base. Its use by a private family set off a government inquiry, turning the Guptas into a favorite target of opposition politicians eager to expose corruption under Mr. Zuma.
Ajay Gupta said he followed the rules to get permission and did not regret the lavish wedding.
“After that, we hand over the girl to the other family,” Mr. Gupta said, tears welling in his eyes.
Source : Nytimes
