- The court ruled in favour of the State in the Nulane Investment fraud case on Thursday.
- The court said it was satisfied with the State's particulars regarding the case.
- The ID said the State had always complied and provided full disclosure.
The Free State High Court in Bloemfontein on Thursday ruled in favour of the State, saying it did not need to provide further information in the Nulane Investment case.
Gupta-owned company Islandsite Investment launched the case against the State.
Gupta associates Ronica Ragavan and Dinesh Patel were in court as company representatives.
The spokesperson for the Investigating Directorate (ID), Sindisiwe Seboka, said the court ruled that the State had provided sufficient information to proceed with the case from 23 January to 3 March next year.
"As the State, we provided full disclosure of the dockets, and we have been complying with all the requests made by the accused to ourselves to best prepare for trial. We want this matter now to be ventilated thoroughly next year," said Seboka.
The accused in the case include Ragavan, former Transnet board member Iqbal Sharma, former Free State head of department for rural development Peter Thabethe, former agriculture department head Limakatso Moorosi and former agriculture department chief financial officer Seipati Dhlamini.
The State alleges the Free State agriculture department paid R24.9 million to Nulane, a company owned and controlled by Sharma, for a fraudulent feasibility study for the Free State's flagship Mohoma Mobung project - the genesis of the Estina scam.
News24 previously reported that, despite the fact Nulane had no staff, the department secured a deviation from procurement rules to appoint it to perform the study on the basis it had special skills.
The company then subcontracted Deloitte, at a cost of R1.5 million, to conduct the feasibility study.
Nulane allegedly subsequently changed the findings of the Deloitte-authored study to identify Paras - an Indian dairy farm allegedly linked to the Guptas - as the most suitable implementing partner for setting up a milk processing plant in Vrede, in the Free State.