It is Tony who is thought to have the closest relationship with President Jacob Zuma’s son Duduzane, as evidenced by the fact that Tony was the first person who Duduzane phoned after getting into a car crash in 2014. Duduzane and Tony have shared directorships of several companies, including empowerment vehicle Mabengela Investments.

The #Guptaleaks emails suggest that Tony holds some unpleasant racial attitudes, having called security guards “monkeys” and having asked Sun City to confirm that all butlers used at his niece’s wedding would be white.

By 2016, Tony had reportedly already started spending more time in Dubai than South Africa. The family owns a house in the Emirates Hills estate. Tony is married to wife Arti.

A source familiar with the Guptas’ business associates says Essa first became acquainted with Rajesh “Tony” Gupta in 2011. The two soon became fast friends, and before long Essa and the Guptas, along with Duduzane Zuma, were exploring business opportunities together.

Other sources familiar with the Guptas have claimed that Essa acts as a proxy for the controversial family.

Essa, through his company Elgasolve, is the majority shareholder in VR Laser Services, a company that has come under fire over its work with state-owned arms manufacturer Denel. VR Laser’s other shareholders are Tony Gupta and Duduzane Zuma.

Through Elgasolve, Essa also holds a 22% stake in Tegeta Exploration and Resources, the Gupta-owned mining firm that bought the struggling Optimum Coal Mine from multinational Glencore.

In one of the first major #GuptaLeaks exposés, Essa was identified as the main role-player in a racket that could see kickbacks worth billions of rands from Transnet’s R50 billion tender for new locomotives being channeled to the Gupta lieutenant.

Trillian Capital Partners, a company majority-owned by Essa, has been in the spotlight over lucrative transaction advisory work it has performed for Eskom and Transnet.

Unlike his siblings, Ajay does not have South African citizenship, and has been living in the country on the status of a permanent resident since 2003. His brother Atul says Ajay is the brains of the family: “a genius, out-of-the-box thinker”, and that he will “cancel any meeting” to play cards with his ageing mother. It is Ajay who is believed to call the shots in the Guptas’ business empire, and Ajay who has the strongest interest in politics.

He is described on his company website as an “avid sports enthusiast”, and is married to Shivani. He has two sons, Surya and Kamal Singhala Gupta – the latter of whom is involved in Gupta businesses including VR Laser.

In 1993, a 25-year-old Atul was sent to South Africa by his father, Shiv Kumar Gupta, to come and explore business opportunities in a country that stood at the doorstep of democracy.

The young Gupta first dabbled in selling shoes before he began establishing a series of information technology (IT) firms. These IT businesses would later lead to the formation of the Sahara group of companies, one of the cornerstones of the Gupta business empire in South Africa.

According to Oakbay Investments’ website, Gupta obtained a BSc qualification from the Meerut University in India in 1989. After graduating and before moving abroad, the middle Gupta son worked at one of his father’s businesses in New Delhi.

Atul once served as chairman of Oakbay Resources and Energy, a holding company for many of the Guptas’ ventures. The company was listed on the JSE in 2014, but was booted from the bourse in 2017. Atul resigned as Oakbay chairperson and gave up his directorships in a string of other Gupta entities following the outcry over the Guptas’ influence in government affairs in 2016.

Gupta’s wife, Chetali, also acted as a director in some of the Guptas’ local businesses.

The emails suggest that Duduzane played an intermediary role in his father’s appointment of Mosebenzi Zwane as mining minister.

In August 2015 Tony Gupta forwarded an e-mail to Duduzane attaching the “CV of MJ Zwane”, then a Free State MEC who had championed the Gupta’s controversial Vrede dairy project.

Shortly thereafter Zuma appointed Zwane to replace the incumbent minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi who had apparently become an obstacle to the Gupta campaign to buy Optimum coal mine.

Ramatlhodi recently revealed that Duduzane had tried to get him to meet the Guptas, but that he resisted their advances.

The files show that in turn the Guptas took care of Duduzane’s every need, from paying for a Mauritian getaway for him and his then girlfriend in 2012, to funding his lavish multimillion-rand marriage to Shanice Stork in April 2015, to setting him up with an R18-million Dubai apartment in the world’s tallest skyscraper, the iconic Burj Khalifa.

Both families have maintained there was nothing untoward in Duduzane’s meteoric rise from IT intern to be a major player in the Gupta empire.

By the end of 2010 he was a director of about a dozen Gupta companies.

The #GuptaLeaks also reveal the pivotal role played by the Guptas’ protégé in briefing the controversial British-based PR firm Bell Pottinger in January 2016.

The firm was brought in at a £100,000-a-month to salvage the reputations of the Gupta and Zuma families by portraying them as victims of a racist backlash by entrenched white business interests.

A list of payments made by a Gupta partner in India featured a $15 000 entry for “SA … President’s clothes (Cash)… India”. And yes, there was evidence the Guptas tried to plan a Dubai escape route and bolt-hole for the president – but Zuma denied this.

Rather, the Gupta-Zuma links were always hidden in plain sight: jobs, enormous salaries, homes and mining deals for his family and political supporters. Most notable was his son, Duduzane, who the Guptas spoiled from the day Zuma rose to power. Duduzane featured frequently in the #GuptaLeaks, while his dad was conveniently absent (though, we hear, he was giggling quietly in the next room) while the Guptas ran South Africa.

They controlled cabinet ministers, parastatal CEOs and board members, while billions in tender fees were dished out to themselves and Duduzane. South Africans were fooled at first, but by mid-2017, the #GuptaLeaks appeared to tip the scales against Operation Zupta.