Gupta bid to make Pravin pay dismissed

Court tells Zuma’s lawyers president is not a party to proceedings

THE High Court in Pretoria rejected a vigorous bid by Gupta-owned Sahara Computers to have Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan personally pay legal costs in the ongoing court wrangle involving South Africa’s major banks.

“The 14th respondent (Sahara Computers) filed a notice in terms of Rule 7 of the uniform rules of court disputing the authority of the State Attorney to represent the applicant, the Minister of Finance, in these proceedings and called on the State Attorney to establish its authority to act for him,” Judge President Dunstan Mlambo said, as he made the ruling on behalf of a full bench of judges yesterday.

“Since the Rule 7 notice was filed out of time, the 14th respondent further filed an application seeking condonation for the late filing of the Rule 7 notice. In our view, the 14th respondent has failed to show good cause for the late filing of the Rule 7 notice. We are satisfied that the State Attorney has the requisite authority to represent the applicant (Gordhan) in these proceedings. The application for condonation is therefore dismissed.”

The court ruling followed submissions by counsel for Sahara Computers, advocate Kameel Premhid, arguing that Gordhan must personally pick up the tab for his “unnecessary application”, not the State Attorney.

Gordhan has approached the court, seeking a declaratory judgment endorsing that he cannot intervene in the dispute between the Gupta-owned Oakbay Investments and South Africa’s major banks.

Premhid had argued that Gordhan was involved in a political conspiracy and must personally foot the costs of the legal action, not being represented by the State Attorney.

“The difficulty here, as has been raised in Sahara’s supplementary affidavit, is that in the main application we contend that even though the minister comes before this court in his ex-officio capacity, he is actually here to obtain a different purpose. As you (judges) will be aware, we say we want a personal cost order against the minister,” Premhid submitted to the judges.

“He must pay for this litigation out of his pocket and not from the state. The relevance of determining authority is important to understand who took the decision, possibly why they took the decision and what ramifications flow from that.”

Earlier, Judge Mlambo told President Jacob Zuma’s lawyers, led by Matthew Chaskalson, SC, that the head of state was not formally any party to the court proceedings and could not seek any relief.

“You are not a party to the proceedings. How do you ask for (any) relief? Our view (is) you are not a party before us. The best you could do is to observe. At some stage your client (Zuma) will make an election whether they want to join the fray.” – ANA