Jonas is a blatant liar, Ajay Gupta says in affidavit

The eldest brother of the Gupta family, Ajay Gupta, in court papers filed on Friday at the Pretoria High Court has rubbished claims by Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas that they had met before, saying Jonas is “blatantly dishonest”.

Gupta was responding to Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s court application seeking a declaratory from the court that there was no law that empowered him to interfere in the decision by the country’s four major banks to close accounts belonging to Gupta-owned Oakbay Investments companies.

Fin24 reports that the acting CEO for Oakbay, Ronica Ragavan, together with Ajay, Duduzane Zuma and Fana Hlongwane, filed court papers on Friday blasting Gordhan for his application he launched in October last year.

In his application the minister had named 72 “dubious and unusual” transactions totalling R6.8 billion by the Guptas flagged by the Financial Intelligence Centre.

“Let me commence this portion of my affidavit to clearly and unambiguously state under oath that I have never met Mr Mcebisi Jonas, not as alleged or at all.

“The fact of the matter is that Mr Jonas is, with respect, blatantly dishonest when he suggests that he met with me or that I attended a meeting with him.

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“I have challenged Mr Jonas, and I do so again, to prove that he met with me as alleged,” said Gupta.

The controversial family, through their shareholding company, has opposed Gordhan’s application, saying it’s superfluous and part of a political smear campaign mounted against them by the family, and the court should reject it.

Ajay has taken aim at Gordhan over his reference to parts of former public protector Thuli Madonsela’s State of Capture report, particularly the alleged meeting between Jonas and the Guptas in which they allegedly offered him the job of minister of finance and money in return for doing favours for the family.

In Madonsela’s report, released in November, Jonas said the Gupta family offered him R600 000 in cash during a meeting at their Saxonwold compound, Johannesburg.

Gupta wants the court to dismiss Jonas’ submission, with Gupta saying the public protector didn’t give him enough time to respond to the allegation and that he never met Jonas.

“On a proper reading and interpretation of the information obtained from the Office of the Public Protector it is evident that the ‘incident’ with Mr Mcebisi Jonas was created in order to support the wave of adverse media attention and to achieve the political advantage obviously gained from creating such a media hype from an incident which never occurred,” said Gupta.

Both Duduzane Zuma and Hlongwane have supported Gupta’s version of events.