Withdraw court application, says Oakbay

OAKBAY Investments, which is controlled by President Jacob Zuma’s friends, the Gupta family, demanded yesterday that Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan withdraw a court application implicating the company in “suspicious transactions”, a day after welcoming the chance to prove its innocence. Oakbay said Gordhan should withdraw the application for a court to rule that he had no obligation to intervene in a decision by the country’s largest banks to shut Gupta-controlled company accounts, as Oakbay had asked him to do. The legal process would mean spending “taxpayers’ money in a reckless and inappropriate manner”, Oakbay’s lawyers said on Tuesday in a letter to Gordhan’s attorneys. In his affidavit last week, Gordhan attached an annex from the Financial Intelligence Centre, a corruption watchdog, that implicated Gupta family members and their businesses in 72 alleged suspect transactions totalling R6.8 billion. Oakbay said on Tuesday that all the activities in question were approved by the banks that had handled them. – Bloomberg