Gupta move revives battle for Treasury
• Talk of Cabinet reshuffle denied by Mbete • Oakbay accuses Gordhan of politicking
The fight for control of the Treasury and against Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has resumed in earnest, as Guptaowned Oakbay Investments released its answering affidavit in the minister’s court application on his powers.
The new onslaught, which follows a tumultuous 2016 for the minister, began on Friday with a media statement from Oakbay which accused him of using the judiciary to settle political scores.
The statement contained “highlights” of the affidavit, which was only later filed in court. Meanwhile, posts on fake news Twitter accounts pushing an anti-Gordhan campaign surged at the weekend.
There have also been calls from the ANC Youth League for President Jacob Zuma to fire Gordhan, and renewed speculation of a Cabinet reshuffle.
Gordhan responded to Oakbay’s statement at the weekend, saying Oakbay was trying to deflect attention from issues raised in his court application by making politically driven claims and allegations.
Gordhan applied to the court in 2016 for a declaratory order to confirm that he in his post of finance minister could not intervene in a dispute between Oakbay and the four major banks which had closed its accounts.
This court matter, which is set to be heard on March 28, forms part of a broader battle between the Treasury and Zuma supporters sympathetic to the Gupta family. The four banks have submitted affidavits in support of Gordhan.
Oakbay wants the court to dismiss Gordhan’s application with costs. In the company’s answering affidavit, Oakbay acting CEO Ronica Ragavan accuses Gordhan of asking the court to “insert itself into the functioning of the executive branch”, which raised questions about the separation of powers.
“If this court were to countenance the minister’s application for guidance here, it would open the floodgate for other weak-kneed political officials who are too scared to take positions on sensitive political and policy matters, as they could (and would) simply retreat to the judiciary for advisory rulings on
any issue they did not want to have to decide,” Ragavan says in the affidavit.
Oakbay also claims it never suggested that the minister intervene in the bank-customer relationship and therefore there was no contested legal issue or even a reason for him to bring the application.
In its papers, Oakbay accuses the banks of raising “many irrelevant issues”, charging that their allegations are “largely hearsay” or devoid of detail
Ragavan’s affidavit also reveals that the Bank of China, which had opened accounts for VR Laser Services on September 8 2016, closed the accounts a few weeks later on September 29, with the bank admitting it had done so because of “potential political risk”. Oakbay has claimed there was interference, which it wants investigated.
The Treasury said its lawyers were studying the affidavit, but that Oakbay’s media statement was making “sensational and politically driven claims and allegations, which are designed to deflect from the primary issues raised in the minister’s declaratory order”.
“The minister believes it is wrong to anticipate the determination of the issues by the court in the way the Gupta-controlled companies seek to do. The court process is to be respected.”
Speculation mounted late last week of a Cabinet reshuffle after the ANC’s top six officials had met at Zuma’s request on Friday — ordinarily the officials meet on a Monday. The meeting began at about 11am and continued into the afternoon. Insiders said a reshuffle was imminent but while ANC chairwoman Baleka Mbete on Sunday confirmed the officials’ meeting, she denied that it had anything to do with a Cabinet reshuffle.
“We [are] not in the culture of sharing about meetings of the top six, but I can assure you we did not discuss a Cabinet reshuffle,” she told Business Day.
The rumours of a reshuffle came after Zuma did not attend the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, last week and the ANC Youth League and ANC Women’s League stepped up their campaign against Gordhan, with the youth league in eThekwini calling on the president to fire him because of the lack of transformation at ailing national carrier South African Airways.
Opposition parties weighed in on the debate at the weekend, claiming a reshuffle was imminent and that presidential hopeful Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma would replace Gordhan as finance minister.
The Congress of the People accused the “ANC [women’s and youth leagues and] the Premier League and their funders, the Guptas” of being the main drivers of this “destructive agenda”. The women’s league denied this on Sunday,