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South African prosecutors announced on Wednesday that they would withdraw bribery charges for some allies of former president Jacob Zuma due to lack of cooperation from Indian officials.
The National Prosecution Authority (NPA) had alleged that $ 20 million ($ 17.2 million) of public money for poor dairy farmers in Free State Province had been directed to the wealthy Gupta family, from India, and their collaborators.
Among the eight defendants was a nephew of the three Gupta brothers, who is at the center of allegations that Zuma oversaw a corrupt network while he was in power, the Guptas having won fraudulent contracts with the government.
The other defendants were former employees of Gupta, the director of the dairy sector and three government officials. The three brothers were not charged.
"The investigators were working with Indian officials to gather information (…) the process was slow, so the information is not provided as quickly as we hoped," said AFP Phaladi Shuping, spokesman of the NPA.
The Gupta brothers left South Africa last year before the police raided their suburban home in Johannesburg.
The prosecuting authorities, who had until November 30 to formally indict the suspects, said they could reinstate the charges in the future.
"We made the decision to withdraw temporarily," said Shuping.
Earlier this year, the Bloemfontein High Court ruled that she was not convinced that there was evidence linking Gupta's assets to the alleged scam.
"This is a reflection on the weakness of the public prosecutor's office," political scientist Daniel Silke told AFP.
"This poses a problem to President Cyril Ramaphosa insofar as opposition parties will clearly use it to accuse him of not lending a hand to the pure issue of fighting corruption.
"But I do not think the people supposedly involved can really rest peacefully for the moment."
Zuma was forced to resign in February, while the ruling party, the ANC, was battling criticism for multiple corruption scandals.
The opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, said the reasons the charges were dropped were "at best fragile and quite convincing".
© 2018 AFP
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