JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 26 (Xinhua) -- South Africa's elite police investigations unit, Hawks, on Friday raided the Free State Premier Ace Magashule's office in search of documents linking him to the Gupta corruption.
Magashule is the secretary general of the ruling party, African National Congress (ANC) elected at the last December conference.
The Free State government confirmed on Friday that the Hawks visited their offices to search and seize documents related to the Vrede farm.
Kopung Ralikontsane, Director General of the Free State, said, "It is in our interest that this matter is brought to its finality to allow the Free State provincial government to continue its work of changing the lives of the people for the better. We wish to assure the public that that we will cooperate with all the law enforcement authorities doing investigations on this matter."
Ralikontsane said, "We wish to thank the members of the public for their patience on the matter and we wish to commit that we will regularly update them on this matter as well as on all our activities which are implemented in line with our mandate."
The Free State agricultural department in 2013 paid 18 million U.S. dollars to Estina, the company that ran the Gupta-linked Vrede Dairy farm which is under investigation for corruption.
The country's South Africa's Asset Forfeiture Unit believes that out of the 18 million dollars, only 166,666 U.S. dollars was used in the farm.
The Vrede farm had promised to empower 100 emerging black farmers with five cows which they never fulfilled. The Asset Forfeiture Unit said the project was done to swindle the government.
