‘Oakbay wanted the ANC to place pressure on banks’

The company’s accounts were closed by the four big banks in 2016.

 

“The reality of the matter is that Oakbay in all their campaigns wanted every institution, including the ANC, to put pressure on the banks to open their accounts,” Mantashe told the commission of inquiry into state capture on Tuesday. 

 

The closure of the Gupta accounts led to loss of 7500 jobs. 

 

Mantashe led an ANC delegation that met with Absa, Nedbank and Standard Bank to discuss the closure of the accounts. 

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“In the delegation, we had Jessie Duarte who is the deputy secretary-general of the ANC. We had Enoch Godongwana, who is the chairperson of the economic transformation committee of the ANC, and we were supported by Krish Naidoo as a legal person in the ANC,” Mantashe said.

 

Mantashe told the commission that they had a better understanding of the decision to close the accounts following the meeting with the banks. 

“Meeting with those banks was a university lecture for us. It educated us on the banking issues, we had a better understanding because of that is why we couldn’t get to the campaign of the bank accounts being opened because we had a broad picture rather than an emotional. We had a broader picture, rather than an emotional one, that says Guptas are just bad and don’t talk to them we had to understand how the banks think,” Mantashe said.

Mantashe concluded his evidence on the banks, but will return to the commission at a future date. 

The commission is expected to hear evidence from former Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramathlodi on Wednesday.