High Court judge damns Guptas

The Gupta family has nine days in which to find a bank willing to take its businesses as clients, failing which, in the words of a family member, the businesses face "inevitable demise".

Twenty companies owned by or linked to the Gupta family made an urgent application to the Pretoria High Court in July for an interdict that would prohibit the Bank of Baroda from closing all their accounts at the end of September.

Judge Hans Fabricius on Thursday dismissed the Guptas' application for interim relief - a delaying of the account closures until the main application for an interdict could be heard on December 7.

Fabricius, in his 74-page judgment, delivered a scathing indictment of the Gupta family and their companies in relation to numerous allegations of state capture.

"The bank [Baroda] can obviously not rely on the truth of such allegations, and neither does it have to," Fabricius said after giving a comprehensive summary of the allegations against the Gupta family and the Oakbay group of companies relating to state capture.

"I am obviously also not in a position to comment, save to say the following: When reading details of the various allegations in the answering affidavit, I could not help but wonder whether, unbeknown to me, democracy and the rule of law had somehow been suspended pro tanto [to the extent implied by the allegations].

"Could it be possible that the future, so bright in 1994, was now only history?

"Do the constitutional obligations imposed on the National Prosecuting Authority, as set out in section 179 of the constitution, still exist?

"Do the various bodies of the SA Police Service referred to in section 205 of the constitution still remember their constitutional duty to combat and investigate crime?

"I cannot give an answer in these proceedings for obvious reasons, but the mere fact that the questions arise gravely concerns each and every one of us," Fabricius said.

The Bank of Baroda included a summary of the allegations publicly levelled at the Guptas with regard to state capture, citing them as evidence of the reputational harm a continued association with the family would inflict on it.

Included in this summary was that, from September 16 2016 to July 14 2017 the bank made 45 reports of suspicious transactions by the Gupta family and companies associated with it to the Financial Intelligence Centre.

These transactions amounted to R4.25-billion.

"As I have set out in some detail, the bank is subject to a number of statutory provisions which, in the main, seek to uphold the integrity of the financial system in this country.

"It seeks to uphold such integrity with honest transparency. On the other hand, there is the well-founded suspicion, having regard to the uncontested events that I have referred to, that the applicants [Gupta family and businesses] subverted the integrity of the financial system, to put it gently," said Fabricius.