Court rules against Gordhan in Gupta banks court case

The High Court in Pretoria has dismissed former finance minister Pravin Gordhan’s application for a declaratory order that the finance minister cannot involve himself in the Guptas’ legal troubles with the banks.

Deputy Judge President Aubrey Ledwaba handed down the ruling on Friday morning.

Gordhan claimed the Gupta family’s Oakbay had hounded him as finance minister to use his political position to prevail on banks to reopen the company’s bank accounts.

He sought a declaratory order that the law did not allow him to intervene in this manner.

In its court papers Oakbay indicated it did not oppose the declaratory order sought by Gordhan on the basis of legal principle but because he had been plotting politically against the company.

Gordhan’s court application revealed that the Financial Intelligence Centre flagged 72 transactions by the Guptas’ business interests as suspect and saw him argue that the banks acted as they did because of the family’s political exposure.

Oakbay argued the order that Gordhan was seeking was abstract because the company indicated in April last year that it accepted that any lawsuit against the banks on its part would be “stillborn”.

But the minister argued the company directly contradicted its own position by having threatened Standard Bank with legal action in April last year, on the same day it claimed to concede that it could not do so.

He added it was therefore impossible to rely on any of Oakbay’s factual versions of the events that followed the banks’ decision to close its accounts, as they were irreconcilable.