The land on which the Sandton Gautrain station sits was irregularly acquired, City of Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba has claimed.

Mashaba, who tomorrow will be in court with the station’s landlord Cedar Park Properties 39 to defend the decision to cut the water supply to the station, has made startling allegations against the company.

He alleged that a fund that the city had which was managed by Gupta-linked Regiments Capital financed the sale of the land to Cedar Park to the tune of R280m in 2009.

According to Mashaba, this sale is “irregular” as it means that the city used its own money to finance a sale of its own land to a private company.

“One must ask, why would the city ever finance the sale of its own land to a private company? This is not only absurd but highly suspect,” said Mashaba on Thursday.

The City had established a R18bn fund in which it would use its returns to pay back inherited debts.

It appointed Regiments to manage the fund. However, a forensic investigation implicated Regiments in wrongdoing. It was alleged that it had received questionable billions of rands from state-owned companies including Eskom and Transnet for dubious contracts between 2015 and 2017.

Mashaba last year terminated the city’s ties with it.

Regiments was also linked to Trillian Advisory Services which had been linked to state capture through its relationship with the Guptas.

Mashaba said that he had launched a “full forensic investigation” into the sale of the land - on which the Sandton Gautrain Station was built - to Cedar Park.

He said there were two senior Regiments individuals who approved the sale but were also linked to Cedar Park.

It is not clear if Mashaba will raise this issue when the city and Cedar Park go head-to-head in court tomorrow but he said: “I will not rest until the city gets to the bottom of this apparent criminality and ensure that those who have elected to abuse public office and steal from our residents face the full might of the law.”