Amit Gupta’s home was raided, had his phones tapped and then he was gone. Now authorities can’t get him back.
In the early hours of June 19, 2013, a panic-wracked Australian businessman boarded an international flight and held his breath. Hours earlier, Amit Gupta’s Gold Coast home had been raided by the federal police.
This masthead has tracked Gupta to Dubai where, late last year, he got more good news: Australian efforts to extradite him had collapsed, rebuffed by the Dubai authorities over a legal technicality.Gupta’s good fortune is not just the product of corporate acumen and cunning.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win,” he said. “It has been a very powerful lesson for me.” Gupta and his family had by then already made vast sums of money by selling phosphate, which is most commonly used to make fertiliser. This substance, formed by the accumulation of generations of droppings by sea birds, had generated incredible wealth for the tiny island over the decades in a boom that decimated the country’s environment. The windfalls were frequently wasted on bad investments and corruption.
“Please mobilise all resources to turn the table and whatever is required from our end please let us know,” Gupta wrote to Adeang, who in turn advised him what Nauruan politicians would want. Neither Adeang nor Stephen responded to multiple requests for comment and Waqa could not be contacted. When similar allegations were raised in 2015, Adeang responded that they had come from his political opponents and were “baseless” and “consistently disproven”.Records of Gupta company transactions obtained by this masthead suggest Gupta’s questionable corporate behaviour from his Gold Coast base extended well beyond Nauru and the phosphate industry.
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