Standard Bank pressured to reopen Gupta accounts

Requests, bad faith persuasion and threats were the order of the day when the governing party and government demanded that the accounts be reopened.

This emerged during evidence given at the public hearings in Parktown on Monday.

Standard Bank was allegedly summoned to the governing party’s headquarters, Luthuli House, to explain its decision to terminate Gupta-linked bank accounts.

The bank's head of compliance, Ian Sinton, laid bare how the executive intervened to overturn its decision to close the accounts linked to the controversial family in 2016.

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“The meeting was an attempt by two cabinet ministers, on behalf of cabinet, to persuade us to retract our decision to close the accounts of the Gupta related entities,” testified Sinton.

He says former Minister of Mineral Resources Mosebenzi Zwane and Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant were at the forefront of the alleged efforts to convince the bank.

“Towards the end of the meeting they reminded us that as a bank we operate under a license granted by government and they suggested we should be more responsive to concerns they were raising on behalf of government,” Zwane allegedly threaten representatives from Standard Bank.

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Zwane then asked what the government could do to reopen the accounts but the bank replied that, according to legislation, that it had no obligation to adhere to the request.

In turn, Sinton says Standard Bank was accused of “white monopoly capital”.

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In the meeting they were asked whether the bank is “part of white monopoly capital and the closing of the accounts was a campaign of ours to drive black people out of business in South Africa”.