Gangster State

benefited from consecutive contracts from the Free State Provincial
Treasury and the national Department of Energy. Empire Technology’s
Mercedes was a white 2016 -model SUV, which meant it had been
purchased after the company secured the two government contracts.
‘Our instructions are to deny that Mr. S Reddy of our client [Empire
Technology] had any knowledge of the alleged meeting at the Beverly
Hills Hotel and furthermore, we have been instructed to place on record
that Mr S. Reddy was out of the Republic at the time of the alleged
meeting,’ Empire Technology’s lawyer told me in a letter. He strongly
denied any suggestion that Empire Technology or Shantan Reddy were
involved in funding the meeting or any other ‘political projects’.
But the alleged Durban plot was just the tip of the iceberg. My
sources, including a former colleague of Magashule in the Free State’s
executive council, described a disconcerting level of familiarity between
the former premier and Shantan Reddy. It is a relationship that
apparently goes back several years. One source recalled that the
businessman once drove to the Free State in 2012 to meet with
Magashule on the sidelines of a lekgotla for executive council members
and mayors. ‘We were meeting at the Philip Saunders Resort outside
Bloemfontein. Shantan and Ace held a private meeting,’ said the
source, who had been privy to parts of the talks between Magashule
and Reddy. The source claimed the meeting had been about a tender
with a government entity that Reddy had apparently lost out on. Reddy
maintained this never happened. ‘Insofar as you allege that you have
been informed of a private meeting held between Mr. S. Reddy and Mr.
Magashule, in and during 2012 , our instructions are to deny that such
a private meeting occurred,’ said Reddy’s lawyer.
In late 2018 , I received even more intriguing information regarding