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Gupta-linked Mediosa goes bust

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SOLD TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER A mobile clinic and a mobile X-ray truck belonging to Mediosa have been taken to an auctioneer in Midrand. Picture: Abram Mashego
SOLD TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER A mobile clinic and a mobile X-ray truck belonging to Mediosa have been taken to an auctioneer in Midrand. Picture: Abram Mashego

Gupta-linked mobile health services provider Mediosa cannot be rescued and has opted to go into controlled liquidation.

The company, which was known as Cureva when it scored a multimillion-rand contract from the Free State health department in 2015, sold at least four ambulances through High Street Auctioneers last week.

City Press spotted the ambulances at the premises of the Midrand auctioneers on Monday and by Wednesday they appeared to have been sold.

They were followed to the lot by a trailer and two large mobile buses with Cureva branding. One was marked as a “mobile X-Ray unit” and the other a “mobile clinic”.

Business rescue practitioner Asif Latib told City Press this week that Mediosa “cannot be rescued” and was in the process of a controlled liquidation.

Latib said the company was in serious debt and owed money to its employees, as well as a number of companies and individuals.

“The hardest affected are the employees,” he said. Latib declined to reveal the total amount the company owed its creditors.

The business rescue practitioner said the affected parties were informed of the outcome of the process during meetings held in Johannesburg at Mediosa’s offices, and at Abbas, Latib & Co attorneys’ Sandton offices.

Latib said the liquidation would not be able to cover the company’s liabilities and it was impossible to say how much each creditor would receive.

However, Latib accused the North West department of health of hanging on to some of Mediosa’s property, which was preventing it from being sold.

“Assets of the entity in rescue are still being unlawfully withheld by North West health department, despite repeated requests to release [them],” he said.

“Moreover, assets such as buses that are parked at the health department in North West are depreciating in value and the department is refusing to return these assets notwithstanding the fact that it has no legal claim to them and the equipment belonging to innocent creditors attached to those vehicles.”

Provincial health MEC Magome Masike announced in July that the department had sent tow trucks to confiscate the mobile clinics in a bid to recoup what it said was taxpayers’ money lost to Mediosa.

In February City Press broke the news of how the Gupta-linked company received a R30 million advance from North West health department a day before it started operating its mobile clinics in the province and after sending the department’s head, Thabo Lekalakala, and his wife and a friend, on a five-star trip to India.

The company was allegedly handed a three-year contract that did not go out to tender.

Masike said the mobile clinics, which were towed from the Ratlou sub-district and Kagisano-Molopo municipalities, were not going to be returned to Mediosa until they had satisfied themselves with the work done.

“My concern is the number of people that Mediosa is claiming to have seen. It cannot be that in a village of 2 000 people you claim to have seen 16 000 patients. We have issues with that,” Masike said earlier this year.

The #GuptaLeaks revealed that Gupta brother Rajesh helped with the visa applications of one of the company’s directors through the family’s technology company Sahara Computers.

Lekalakala remains on suspension pending a finalisation of his disciplinary proceedings.

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