Guptas lash FIC for leaking money trail

Bank of Baroda ordered to keep accounts open

The Guptas have slammed the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) for publicly revealing the movement of their money offshore in a suspicious transaction report (STR) released last year.

President Jacob Zuma’s controversial friends, through their company Optimum Coal, told South Gauteng High Court Judge Margie Victor that the FIC should not have disclosed the STRs because this was a breach of their statutory right to confidentiality.

The Guptas said the FIC infringed on their right to confidentiality and warned that if the centre is not stopped it would open doors for chaos in the country.

In August last year, the FIC released information on 72 suspicious transactions worth nearly R7 -billion made by companies owned by the Guptas.

The transactions, ranging from R5 000 to R1.3-billion, were made between December 2012 and June 2016.

Details of their finances could only be disclosed to the National Prosecuting Authority and behind closed doors, the Guptas told Victor.

The Guptas want the FIC’s decision to publicly reveal the STRs reviewed and set aside.

They are also demanding more information on the STRs, including records and reasons for the disclosure of the transactions.

FIC director Murray Michell and the finance ministry have been cited as respondents in the matter.

Pravin Gordhan, finance minister at the time, revealed the transactions in another court case in which he wanted the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria to declare that he had no power to intervene in the Guptas’ dispute with the country’s major banks that had closed the family’s accounts.

At the North Gauteng High Court yesterday, Judge HansJoachim Fabricius ordered the Bank of Baroda to keep the accounts of the Guptas’ companies opened.

Like other major banks, the Bank of Baroda had notified the companies that it intended closing their accounts. Fabricius granted an interdict against the Bank of Baroda from deactivating or closing the Gupta business accounts before a final application is heard.

‘ ‘ Suspicious transactions were worth nearly R7bn