Gordhan rips into Gupta conspiracy claims
Finance minister Pravin Gordhan has slammed claims by the Gupta family that he is masterminding a conspiracy to shut down its businesses in South Africa, saying that if they truly believed that, they would not have asked him for help in the first place.
In an answering affidavit submitted on the case initially launched by Gordhan – to get a court order preventing him from interfering with the family’s business with South African banks – the minister pointed out that the family, confusingly, agrees with his case, but still insisting on working against it.
Specifically, he noted the Gupta family’s concession (through their answering affidavit) that there was no legal basis for Gordhan to initiate the court action, as there was no requirement for him to intervene on SA banks matter.
However, the family then went on to insist that there is a conspiracy – in which the banks and the South African Reserve Bank are players, masterminded by Gordhan – to shut down its businesses.
The family insisted that this should become the subject of further investigation and ‘decisive action’.
“After having persistently sought to implore my intervention, Oakbay shifts position to ask the Court to refuse my application on the very basis that it now accepts there is no legal basis on which it could seek to impose pressure on me (to intervene with the banks),” Gordhan said.
“Oakbay’s concession of the illegality of executive intervention is therefore inconsistent with (its) own answering affidavit, which still insists on ‘decisive action’ against the banks,” he said.
There is no vendetta
Gordhan took umbrance with the Gupta family’s claims – with no evidence – that he had met with ’60 heads of business’ to work to shut down the family’s business operations in South Africa.
“Oakbay has indiscriminately advanced similar claims against others. Now it advances the same accusation against me. But only now is it for the first time contended that I am somehow the author of a grand political plot against the Guptas,” he said.
The finance minister pointed out that if Oakbay truly believed he was the one who orchestrated the closure of the group’s South African accounts, it would not have approached him for assistance in the first place.
He denied there was such a vendetta against the Guptas, saying that it was his duty as finance minister to uphold the integrity of the financial sector and to safeguard National Treasury from inappropriate interference by influential individuals.
Citing the Public Protector report into state capture, and referencing public statement by his deputy, Mcebisi Jonas, about the influence the Gupta family on government, Gordhan said that there was nothing improper or political about a minister of finance distancing himself from a family facing such allegations.
“It is the closure of the accounts which is the subject matter of (my court case). Ascribing improper political motive to me, acting in my capacity as minister of finance, is therefore baseless and, again, simply scurrilous,” Gordhan said.
The minister said it would be prejudicial for the banks to feel pressured into revisiting a decision taken against “politically-exposed” people, and added that he had never before been approached by any entity to intervene in bank-client relations.
He said there are no hypotheticals: the Oakbay bank accounts were closed; the Oakbay companies are associated with suspicious payments; Oakbay did ask Gordhan to intervene; and the Gupta family did approach the deputy finance minister with a ‘matter of notoriety.
“Perceptions of political pressure strongly militate in favour of granting declaratory relief, at the very least as formulated in my application,” Gordhan said.
The full affidavit can be read here (via Times Media)
Read: ‘Flawed, abusive political conspiracy’ – why the Guptas think Gordhan’s court bid should be dropped
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