Johannesburg:
South Africa's high-profile Gupta family has dismissed media reports that their home in Johannesburg had been burgled and one of their staff arrested.
"The report is erroneous. The family can categorically state that none of their properties were robbed," said Gupta family spokesman Gary Naidoo.
Reports in some local media on Thursday claimed that three men in two vehicles entered the Gupta's residential property on Wednesday, tied up the gardener and stole money, household goods and jewellery worth more than one million.
The reports also quoted police spokesman Lungelo Dlamini as saying that a domestic worker who had disappeared after the robbery had been arrested later in connection with "a robbery at a house belonging to the Gupta family in Houghton."
But the Gupta family denied any link to the robbery incident, pointing out that their residence was not even in the elite suburb of Houghton, as indicated in the police report, but in another suburb of Johannesburg.
The Gupta family has been in the spotlight since an incident earlier this year in which a planeload of guests for a huge family wedding landed at the Waterkloof Air Force Base, allegedly without proper authorisation.
The family, which made their fortune in the IT industry after first settling in South Africa in the 1990s, now owns a national daily, The New Age, and earlier this month launched Africa News Network7, a satellite television channel in partnership with an Indian consortium.
They have close ties to President Jacob Zuma and the African National Congress ruling party and own a newspaper and television news channel.