Mkhwebane being ‘investigated’ by FNB – report

The report came from the global non-profit reporting group the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which published their article on Tuesday alleging that global banking giant HSBC had leaked banking records to them suggesting that Mkhwebane had been “flagged” for having received at least $5,000 (R70,000 at the current exchange rate) about five years ago, two years before she became the public protector, in an investigation involving Gupta-linked accounts.

News24 subsequently reported that the money was probably her own funds she’d transferred back to the country, raising the question of why she said she hadn’t done so either.

The OCCRP report reads: “The bank flagged a payment worth over US$5,000 into Mkhwebane’s account at First National Bank in South Africa in June 2014, during the height of the Gupta family’s influence over the Zuma government, the records show. The money was sent from an account at HSBC’s subsidiary in Hong Kong.

“First National Bank declined to comment, citing client confidentiality,” they continued.

However, the Mail & Guardian has now reported that FNB is looking into whether Mkhwebane may have violated exchange control regulations for moving money between countries.

FNB allegedly flagged Mkhwebane’s account several weeks before the report about the HSBC investigation came out.

A “senior bank executive” has reportedly been looking into it.

Although Mkhwebane denied knowledge of the investigation to the M&G, it has nevertheless reported that this is allegedly not true and that Mkhwebane has in fact asked for more time to explain “several payments of odd amounts between 2014 and now”.

Her spokesperson Oupa Segwale said she’d never received payments from overseas into her FNB account, aside from an amount from Indonesia by her daughter-in-law’s parents for the daughter-in-law this year.

HSCB has reportedly been tracking down the network of Gupta-linked accounts and companies around the world.

Mkhwebane’s spokesman had also told the OCCRP that his boss had no links to the Guptas and denied receiving any money from them. She has in any event not been directly implicated in taking Gupta funds.

In a statement released by Segalwe on Tuesday evening, he said: “Advocate Mkhwebane would like to place on the record the fact that she heard for the first time from the OCCRP last Thursday that she had been ‘flagged’. HSBC has never brought this ‘flagging’ to her attention and she has absolutely no links with the Guptas.”

At the time she allegedly received the money she was about to leave her position “in China as a South African Embassy official”, the report clarified.

“She then returned to the Department of Home Affairs in South Africa,” he said.

The HSBC transaction was flagged as part of an investigation into the Guptas’ controversial involvement with China South Rail in a $1.5 billion contract to sell locomotives to Transnet.

Segalwe disputed this in his statement, saying the OCCRP had admitted there was no indication that the source of the funds were from the Gupta network, or that there was proof she had done anything inappropriate, only alleging she was “flagged” as being part of the network of payments by the bank.

Segalwe said it was “strange that today, the organisation reports that she was ‘flagged’ as having financial ties to the Guptas”.

(Edited by Charles Cilliers