Unaccountable 00047 — Salim Essa, the shadow broker of State Capture, remains unaccountable

Salim Essa was a key figure in the State Capture-linked Gupta network. A shadowy dealmaker, he allegedly operated as a central intermediary in the sprawling network of corruption that came to define South Africa’s contemporary State Capture. Yet, he has now been a fugitive of justice in Dubai for nine years, and there is little evidence of progress in bringing him back to face a South African court.

The final findings of the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture place Essa at many a State Capture crime scene. The commission concluded that Essa acted behind the scenes, brokered corrupt deals, and facilitated irregular contracts across a range of the country’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs). While enriching himself and the Gupta inner circle to the tune of billions, Essa was allegedly deeply entangled in schemes that hollowed out state institutions and robbed the country of billions in public funds. Yet, years later, Essa has never been criminally charged in relation to any of the findings of the commission.

Today, as prosecutors pursue charges tied to the infamous Transnet locomotive deal, Essa remains a notable absence in the dock. The NPA is on record that he is wanted in relation to this case and indicated in 2022 (and again in 2023) that it was seeking his extradition. In 2026, he remains safely in Dubai.

The fixer at the centre of State Capture

Salim Aziz Essa, born in 1978 in Limpopo, grew up far removed from the hardship that defines the lives of many in South Africa. By all accounts, he enjoyed a privileged upbringing, attending St John’s College, one of Johannesburg’s most exclusive private schools, and driving a BMW sports car at just 18.

Property records show that on 30 March 2012, Essa acquired a high-end home in New Forest Road in Forest Town, Johannesburg, valued then at roughly R4.7-million. His garage, according to reports, has reflected the same taste for extravagance: a black Bentley, a Porsche 911 Carrera and a Ferrari are among the vehicles that have been linked to him. Company records also reveal that Essa has, at one time or another, been a director of more than 50 companies.

For years, Essa was identified as a key lieutenant within the Gupta orbit. The trove of emails in the #GuptaLeaks, alongside numerous investigative reports, have pointed to Essa as a pivotal operator within the Gupta network. This led journalist Jessica Bezuidenhout to call Essa State Capture’s “man of the moment” as early as 2019.

The findings of the Zondo Commission confirmed this. Across its six-volume final report, Essa’s name appears no fewer than 800 times. In its final report, the Zondo Commission recommended that law enforcement authorities investigate and consider prosecuting Essa in relation to “various contracts concluded between 2012 and 2016 that led to the payment of at least R7.34-billion in kickbacks to companies controlled either by him or the Gupta family”.

Essa is currently holed up in Dubai, where he fled to in 2017, in the immediate aftermath of the explosive release of the #GuptaLeaks, the release of Thuli Madonsela’s State of Capture report, and the parliamentary inquiry into the capture of Eskom.

Read more

Gupta Inc’s Salim Essa: ‘I’m no fugitive — I emigrated to Dubai’

May 14, 2023

Two years later, in 2019, Essa and the Gupta brothers – Atul, Rajesh and Ajay – were sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury through its Office of Foreign Assets Control.

The UK followed suit in April 2021, placing Essa on its sanctions list under its then newly launched Global Anti-Corruption Sanctions Regime. According to the UK foreign secretary at the time, the sanctions targeted individuals “at the heart of a persistent pattern of corruption in South Africa which caused significant damage to its economy and directly harmed the South African people”. Today, Essa remains on both the US and UK sanctions lists, with the UK sanctions having been updated in 2025 to disqualify him from being a director or forming any company in the UK.

While foreign governments moved to impose consequences and pursue accountability, efforts on home soil appeared to lag, even as allegations and evidence continued to mount.

Billions in kickbacks and dubious deals

The allegations connecting Essa to State Capture span almost all of the most controversial scandals of the Gupta-linked contemporary State Capture era, from the infamous multibillion-rand Transnet 1,064 locomotive procurement deal to Eskom and Denel, and even the Estina Dairy Farm project.

The findings of the Zondo Commission outlined a tightly interlinked network between McKinsey, Regiments and Trillian that extracted massive fees from Transnet and Eskom. These firms were repeatedly embedded in high-value advisory roles, often through opaque or contested contracting processes, where consulting agreements were leveraged to facilitate the large-scale diversion of public funds.

These were key channels through which billions of rands were funnelled from the state into the pockets of Essa and the Gupta brothers, among others. The story of Regiments and Trillian is told in more detail in the previous instalment of the Unaccountable series, focused on another key Gupta associate, Eric Wood.

Read more

Unaccountable 00046: Eric Wood at the centre of a stalled reckoning over Transnet billions

April 22, 2026

Through his company Elgasolve, Essa also held a 22% stake in Tegeta Exploration and Resources, a Gupta-controlled mining vehicle that acquired Optimum Coal Mine (OCM) from Glencore. The transaction facilitated the transfer of valuable and strategic mining assets tied to coal supply at Eskom into the hands of Gupta-linked entities and associates, chief among which included Essa. The Zondo Commission concluded that Essa and Wood worked with Eskom executives to conceal the real motivations behind the OCM deal.

Essa has also been linked to State Capture at the state-owned defence company, Denel. Also through Elgasolve, Essa held a controlling stake in VR Laser Services, which became embroiled in State Capture allegations over its dealings with Denel. VR Laser was placed squarely within the Gupta network, where, alongside Essa’s majority interest, minority stakes were held by Tony Gupta and former president Jacob Zuma’s son Duduzane Zuma.

T-Systems – the tainted trails

Another link between Essa and the Gupta-linked State Capture network is through the German multinational technology firm T-Systems. Open Secrets published an earlier profile in the Unaccountables series that focused on the impunity enjoyed by the German technology giant.

That article, relying on evidence presented to the Zondo Commission by Paul Holden of Shadow World Investigations and the final reports of the commission, showed that T-Systems secured more than R12.3-billion in contracts later flagged as tainted by State Capture, making it the second-largest corporate winner of Gupta-linked State Capture billions. The lion’s share of the money flowed from “master service agreements”, contracts to supply IT systems and services to Transnet and Eskom.

The Zondo Commission confirmed that Essa had played an instrumental behind-the-scenes role in enabling T-Systems to obtain and retain lucrative state contracts at both Transnet and Eskom, acting as an intermediary between T-Systems and officials inside the SOEs.

Benefits from these dubious contracts flowed to the Guptas and to companies linked to Essa. One such company was Zestilor, identified as part of the Gupta Enterprise’s broader money-laundering architecture. Zestilor is owned by Essa’s wife, Zeenat Osmany, and it received more than R3-million from T-Systems; funds that stemmed from the tainted contracts with Transnet and Eskom.

In turn, these funds helped enable regular payments from Zestilor to Essa himself. Between 2012 and July 2015, Essa received just over R500,000 from the company. Open Secrets’ efforts in reaching out with questions to T-Systems and Osmany have, so far, yielded no fruit. Essa did respond to Open Secrets through his lawyers, but did not respond to any of Open Secrets’ questions regarding T-Systems.

Spoils of capture: tracing Essa’s remaining SA assets

As corrupt state contracts – many negotiated by Essa – enabled billions to flow through networks tied to the Gupta enterprise, companies linked to Essa were simultaneously accumulating high-end assets, a pattern that illustrates how the spoils of State Capture were converted into private wealth.

One such entity was Targatorque, a company registered in 2011. Company records show that Essa served as the sole director of Targatorque from 2011 until his resignation in 2019. In 2014, Targatorque purchased an upmarket property in Houghton Estate, Johannesburg, one of the city’s most exclusive residential areas. The property, at the time, was valued at approximately R10.75-million and remains registered under the company’s ownership.

Records from the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission show that a company called Apartment 12216 was registered in 2013. The company records reflect that, alongside Nabeel Aziz Essa and Shehzad Aziz Essa, Salim Essa was the director of this company from its registration in 2013 until he resigned from the company in 2018.

Records suggest that Nabeel and Shehzad Essa are probably Salim Essa’s older brothers. Their father, the late Aziz Omar Essa, was laid to rest in Polokwane in March 2018. Reports at the time noted that, while mourners gathered at the funeral, Salim Essa was a “no-show” amid speculation as to whether he was unable or unwilling to return to South Africa.

The nature and operations of Apartment 12216 are unclear. However, the listed company address places it in a modest industrial and commercial pocket in Polokwane, surrounded by everyday retail activity, not far from a Limpopo Cash and Carry outlet and close to a local furniture store, Fairprice.

Corporate records reveal that, in 2013, the year it was registered, Apartment 12216 purchased a high-end residential property in Houghton Estate, valued at approximately R6.29-million, which it still owned in 2023. Current company records show that both Nabeel and Shehzad Essa remain listed as active directors of the company and that the company is still in business. Open Secrets has not yet received a response to questions sent to Nabeel Essa and Shehzad Essa, including questions on the source of the funds for this property.

Neither of these companies has previously surfaced in public reporting tied directly to State Capture contracts and Salim Essa. At present, we do not have access to any financial statements that explicitly show whether funds flowed from Zestilor into the entities that ultimately acquired these properties.

What is clear, however, is the timing. These companies were registered, and the properties purchased, during the years when Essa was deeply embedded in the machinery of corruption surrounding the Gupta enterprise, brokering relationships, facilitating contracts and helping secure lucrative deals across major state-owned companies. While a direct financial trail linking these property purchases to proceeds of State Capture has not been publicly established, the overlap in timelines raises questions about how these purchases were funded.

Open Secrets wrote to Essa and his lawyers about his conduct during the State Capture years, including detailed questions regarding these properties and whether they were purchased with the proceeds of State Capture deals. Essa responded through his lawyers, expressly denying any wrongdoing, but did not directly address any of Open Secrets’ questions about these properties.

Essa added that he “has never been charged, indicted or convicted of any criminal offence in South Africa or elsewhere. He is not even the subject of a civil judgement. This is a fundamental and material fact that must appear prominently in any article purporting to deal with his conduct. Any article that fails to record this fact will be misleading.”

All quiet on the extradition front

This article has relied heavily on the final findings of the Zondo Commission. Perhaps unsurprisingly, and despite refusing to appear before the commission in person to tell his side of the story, Essa launched a legal challenge to overturn the Zondo Commission’s findings in August 2022.

Essa maintains that he was “denied a fair opportunity to respond” at the Zondo Commission. However, he is on record admitting that the commission invited him to attend to cross-examine witnesses who implicated him in wrongdoing.

Essa told Open Secrets that his “application was to test the Zondo report”, reiterating that he “has never accepted any of the findings or recommendations of the Zondo commission insofar as they relate to him”.

In October 2022, lawyers representing the Zondo Commission, acting through the Office of the State Attorney, wrote to Essa’s legal team with a clear demand: if he intended to pursue his court challenge against the commission’s findings, he must first provide security for legal costs.

The request was intended to safeguard the state against the possibility of being saddled with significant legal expenses should Essa’s review application ultimately fail. State lawyers argued that a guarantee was necessary, given that he is currently living outside South Africa. The commission also argued that Essa was a fugitive from justice and that, as such, his application to set aside the findings of the commission should be dismissed.

In a decisive ruling issued in December 2025, former Gauteng High Court Judge President Dunstan Mlambo (now a justice of the Constitutional Court), dismissed Essa’s application to review the findings of the Zondo Commission, concluding that his position outside the country placed him beyond the reach of South Africa’s justice system. While Essa denied being a fugitive, Mlambo was unconvinced, finding that:

“The findings of the commission place him at the centre of the State Capture project. Almost all the companies that benefited from the State Capture enterprise featured the applicant as the central figure, a factor that has [now] received judicial confirmation… He [Essa] has therefore placed himself beyond the reach of our justice system, and it would be untenable for him to benefit from a system he has fled from. All this background provides a sufficient basis to find that the applicant is indeed a fugitive from justice.”

Essa told Open Secrets that the court’s dismissal of the matter was based on a procedural issue and, as such, did not address the merits of the Zondo Commission report, which he still disputes.

But this raises a burning question: what progress has the state made in obtaining the extradition of this fugitive? The Investigating Directorate of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) first announced it was seeking Essa’s extradition in 2022, but refused to provide an update to Daily Maverick journalists in 2023. In September 2023, the NPA was in talks with UAE authorities regarding a second application to have the Gupta brothers extradited, following the dramatic failure in the first instance.

Read more

Is Salim Essa another next sucker punch loading for SA prosecutors?

May 15, 2023

At the time, it was reported that they would also be addressing the extradition of Essa. Nearly three years later, there have been no public updates regarding any progress in this regard, save for one brief aside in court: in February 2024, during the bail proceedings for Anoj Singh in relation to charges in the Transnet 1064 prosecution, the state expressed concern about Singh’s intention to travel to the UAE. It noted a lack of cooperation from UAE authorities and told the court it was still seeking Essa’s extradition from Dubai.

In response to questions from Open Secrets, the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption at the NPA said that the extradition of Essa and the Gupta brothers remained a priority, but that the delays from foreign jurisdictions have slowed the process. It told Open Secrets:

“The NPA awaits responses to the requests for mutual legal assistance (MLA’s) submitted to the UAE, Hong Kong and China. The responses will have an impact on the trajectory of the investigations as substantial information is sought from these jurisdictions.”

Open Secrets has written before about the lack of coordination between state entities when it comes to accountability for State Capture, and there was a notable example at an early point in this saga. In August 2022, Essa reportedly entered the South African consulate in Dubai to attest to the affidavit he needed to legally challenge the Zondo Commission. Yet, despite being wanted by law enforcement, and just weeks after Atul and Rajesh Gupta had been arrested in the same city, Essa had no trouble walking in and out of South Africa’s consulate.

Nearly a decade after the Gupta-linked State Capture project was exposed, and years following the release of the final findings of the Zondo Commission, Essa remains one of its most elusive figures. At the centre of allegations involving billions in public funds, tied to networks that reshaped South Africa’s political and economic landscape, he continues to fight his case from abroad. For prosecutors, the pursuit is far from over. But for now, one of the alleged architects of State Capture remains out of reach. DM