Guptas in court bid to keep Baroda in SA
Nineteen Gupta-linked companies have approached the High Court in Pretoria in a bid to stop the Bank of Baroda from closing its South African operations, and have accused the bank of acting in bad faith.
The bank announced in February that it planned to close its branch in the country following an instruction from its headquarters in India.
In answering papers to the entities, Baroda’s acting CEO of SA operations, Manoj Kumar Jha, explained that the decision to shut up shop in the country followed a decision by Nedbank to terminate its relationship with Baroda.
This would mean that it would be impossible for Baroda to provide transactional banking facilities to any of its customers.
But the Gupta entities are insisting that the closure of the Baroda branch in SA is in contempt of court following an interim order handed down by high court Judge Tati Makgoka in October 2017, stopping Baroda from “deactivating and/or closing” the accounts or from terminating the banker-customer relationship.
Makgoka ordered Baroda to continue providing banking services to the Gupta-family companies to shield about 7‚000 staff in their employ.
The final application in the matter of the closing of the bank accounts still needs to be heard.
Each company has transactional banking facilities with Baroda. Annex, Sahara Computers and VR Laser also have overdraft facilities, while Confident has two term loans, of which the last installment is only due in 2019.
Baroda has also either issued or procured guarantees for several of the companies and holds substantial security for these various facilities.
The companies want the court to interdict the bank from closing its operations until the finalisation of litigation between them and Baroda.
Oakbay CEO Ronica Ragavan, in an affidavit on behalf of the companies, complained that Baroda had only informed her in an e-mail just before 9pm on February 12 that the bank would stop operating in SA from March 31 2018.
The letter from Jha also stated that Baroda would not accept any “new/incremental deposits from, or on behalf of its customers” from March 1.
Ragavan was adamant that the bank would have known long before this that its South African branch was going to be closed. Jha said Baroda
Acting Hawks head Yolisa Matakata told Parliament on Wednesday that the timing of the elite police unit’s raid at the Guptas’ Saxonwold compound two weeks ago was not a function of politics but bureaucracy, blaming the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) for the delay.
Lt-Gen Matakata told the portfolio committee on police that the Hawks had been ready to pounce on the family for a long time but that the unit had to wait for approval from the NPA.
Opposition politicians have lamented the perception that the state’s crime-busting agencies only acted against the Guptas once former president Jacob Zuma resigned.
The raid on the Gupta residence coincided with Zuma’s resignation, raising questions about the independence of the Hawks. But Matakata said the Hawks had to wait for approval to raid the property. “It was not politics that prevented us. But the NPA gave us the go-ahead. We agree that state capture arrests and investigations should be expedited and we anticipate that more will be done in this regard. This must and will progress as the law allows.”
Police committee chairman Francois Beukman asked Matakata if whistle-blowers were still co-operating with the Hawks in relation to state capture-related investigations, to which she responded “yes”.
The committee raised concerns about reports that the Hawks were negotiating with Ajay Gupta, who had not yet been arrested. Matakata maintained that the Hawks were not in the business of cutting deals.
“Ajay Gupta is a fugitive. We refused to give his lawyers access to documents regarding our investigations.
“We are engaging Interpol about accessing him. There is no negotiation with him. It is a correspondence. The lawyer wanted to know why he was being arrested and to see the charges but we are maintaining that we want Ajay Gupta,” she said.
The NPA had provided prosecutors to help the Hawks with the state capture investigations.