South Africa’s elite police service says its investigators have opened a case into the “Guptaleaks,” following the agency’s silence after thousands of emails were leaked to South African media outlets and first surfaced in May.

The cache of emails – some estimates put it as high as 200,000 – are drawn from communications of the influential Gupta business family. Local media and opposition politicians say that the leaked emails demonstrate without a doubt that the Gupta power at the center of last year’s “State of Capture” corruption report is a reality and that, as the Daily Maverick put it, South African media outlets are not exaggerating when they say “the Guptas run South Africa.”

President Jacob Zuma, implicated in the Gupta dealings, has said for months he has done nothing wrong but remains dogged by outraged protesters, public demands that he resign, the abandonment from many of his own African National Congress members and parliamentary calls for narrowly escaped no-confidence votes.

The Daily Maverick, which claimed possession of the leaked emails prior to sharing with other South African news outlets, said it has set up a new investigative unit and is protecting the data with the help of an “offshore organization” that will make the emails available to journalists from a secure platform.

Yet it was just on Monday that the HAWKS unit finally confirmed that its acting head, Lt. Gen. Yolisa Matakata, has initiated an inquiry into the email leaks. That inquiry is expected to prove the authenticity of the documents and how they were leaked.

Image: Republic of South Africa