Gupta brothers’ Johannesburg mansions relisted at 62% off

Two Johannesburg mansions owned by a company linked to the Gupta brothers, the businessmen at the centre of South Africa’s state-capture scandal, are back on the market at about 62% below their municipal value, after a sale agreed last year fell through.

The houses on Saxonwold Drive, in the leafy suburb of Saxonwold, went up for sale online on Wednesday. A seven-bedroom house is advertised for R10 million ($600,000) and a neighbouring 11-bedroom house for R12 million ($720,000), and lower offers may be considered. Together, the R22 million ($1.3 million) asking price compares with combined municipal valuations of about R58.5 million ($3.5 million) for the two main homes in the compound.

The seller is Confident Concept Pty Ltd., the Gupta-linked company that owns the properties and has been in business rescue, South Africa’s form of bankruptcy protection, since 2018. Money from the sale will go to its creditors.

“We’ve been battling to find buyers due to the stigma associated with the properties,” said Kurt Knoop of Manci Knoop Financial Services, the business-rescue practitioners handling the sale. Knoop said the homes are in poor condition. An open house is planned for this weekend, and anyone who wants to view them must show identification and proof of funds.

A failed sale

The compound has been hard to sell. At an auction run by Park Village Auctions in July 2025, the two big houses drew no successful bids. Only the smallest property on the plot, a three-bedroom single-storey home valued at R5.5 million, found a buyer, at R3.3 million. Clive Lazarus of Park Village said at the time that municipal valuations and monthly rates of up to R30,000 were putting buyers off.

A few weeks later, in August 2025, the auctioneers announced that the three houses, with their furniture and appliances, had been sold to a single buyer for R34.5 million ($2.1 million) in a private deal. That was well below the R64 million at which they had been advertised before the auction, a figure that matched their combined municipal value. That deal later fell through, putting the two main houses back on the market.

The seven-bedroom house now on offer has an indoor swimming pool, a thatched outdoor entertainment area, a mini cricket pitch, water features and a garden of endangered cycads. The 11-bedroom house next door has a beauty parlour, a cinema lounge and a rooftop terrace.

At the centre of state capture

The Saxonwold compound became a byword for the Guptas’ influence over former President Jacob Zuma’s government. Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta, who moved to South Africa from India in the 1990s, built a business that ran from computers to coal mining and media. A judicial commission led by Raymond Zondo, now retired as chief justice, heard evidence that the brothers held meetings at the homes where government posts and money were offered to officials.

Mcebisi Jonas, a former deputy finance minister, told the commission that Ajay Gupta offered him the post of finance minister and R600 million at the Saxonwold home in 2015. The Guptas have denied wrongdoing, as has Zuma.

Atul and Rajesh Gupta left for Dubai shortly before Zuma was forced to resign in 2018. The U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on the three brothers in 2019, and Interpol issued red notices for Atul and Rajesh in 2022. They were arrested in Dubai that year, but a court in the United Arab Emirates rejected South Africa’s extradition request in 2023. South Africa withdrew its arrest warrant for Ajay Gupta in 2019.

South Africa’s acting police minister, Firoz Cachalia, told Parliament last month that Atul and Rajesh Gupta are believed to be in India and that the Interpol notices are still in force. The National Prosecuting Authority says it is working with authorities in the UAE and India to bring them back to stand trial.