NATIONAL NEWS - The chairperson of the commission of inquiry into state capture, Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, has ruled that the Gupta emails that were leaked to the media and subsequently blew the lid on state capture will be admissible as evidence.
Zondo ruled on Friday that data – emails – on the original hard drive and the data that was forensically imaged on to two other hard drives may be used as evidence at the commission.
The commission’s chair, however, ruled that nobody outside of the commission shall have access to either of the hard drives until it is presented by the commission’s legal team at a public hearing of the commission.
Zondo added that should any specific person or party wish to have access to the hard drives at any time prior to the legal team’s presentation at the commission’s public hearing, such person or party must first obtain the leave of the commission.
On Thursday and Friday, the commission heard the application to admit the so-called Gupta emails as evidence.
The evidence is in the form of data on hard drives, said the commission’s head of legal Paul Pretorius.
Pretorius said: “The application is made on behalf of Terence Nombembe, who is the commission’s lead investigator. On 28 of May 2017, The Sunday Times [newspaper] published what became known as the Guptaleaks, or GuptaEmails. In due course, journalists employed by amaBhungane [M & G newspaper], among others, published excerpts and analysis of this data over a period of time. All this data was originally contained in a computer hard drive, the commission now has the hard drive in safe keeping… that is what will be referred to as the original hard drive.”
The hard drive belonged to Gupta-owned Sahara Computers, he said.
