Home Affairs dents Atul Gupta's passport bid
Atul Gupta’s audacious bid for a new South African passport while dodging State Capture corruption investigations and criminal charges has been dented by a decisive response from the Department of Home Affairs, says a Daily Maverick report.
It has told him that SA courts do not entertain fugitives from justice.
‘I am advised and respectfully submit that our courts have held for nearly a century that a fugitive from justice has no standing to approach a South African court,’ Home Affairs DG Livhuwani Tommy Makhode states in an affidavit filed in June.
By definition, such fugitives refuse to submit to ‘our laws and our courts’ and avoid the processes of the law through flight out of the country, Makhode says.
The Guptas fled SA as the investigations into their involvement in state capture, fraud and corruption gained momentum.
‘Because they put themselves beyond the reach of the South African law, fugitives from justice are not entitled to invoke the machinery of the law or the protection or authority of the courts when it suits them to do so,’ said Makhode in a sworn statement in response to Atul Gupta’s High Court application to compel Home Affairs to give him a passport.
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