Guptas push for FIC papers

The Gupta brothers

The Gupta brothers

Published Nov 13, 2016

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Cape Town - The Guptas have not given up the fight against Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan over his application for a declaratory court order despite the lapse of the deadline for the family to file opposing affidavits.

Lawyer for the Gupta family, Gert van der Merwe, on Saturday said they would lodge a court application this week to force the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) to release documents to help them in their opposing application against Gordhan.

Van der Merwe said despite the lapse this week of the deadline to file opposing affidavits, the case was not over. He said they would apply for condonation to allow them to file their affidavits at a later stage.

But they needed to get the FIC documents first before they could fight Gordhan in court.

“Remember in the application the minister of finance refers to the FIC document and the FIC does not want to give me that information,” said Van der Merwe.

He said the FIC application would be lodged within a week-and-a-half.

Gordhan has claimed that there were allegedly 72 suspicious transactions by the Gupta family amounting to R6.8 billion. But the family has denied the transactions were suspicious.

Van der Merwe said they wanted to use the opportunity in court to prove their case. This week the FIC hit back at the Guptas and the Hawks for refusing to give them information.

FIC director Murray Mitchell said suggestions that they were withholding information from law enforcement agencies were wrong.

This related to the Hawks claim that they have been unable to continue with their investigations into the Guptas because of a lack of co-operation from the FIC.

Murray said this was simply not true as they preferred to deal with other law enforcement agencies on operational matters directly.

He said the claim that the investigation by the Hawks had ground to a halt because of lack of co-operation was without basis.

In the past year, the FIC has responded to almost 2 000 requests for information to help with investigations, he said.

Mitchell said it was not their mandate to give information on suspicious transactions because of confidentiality issues involved.

“If the FIC refuses you access to this information... it is because the person requesting it did not meet the threshold set by the legislator.

“We also want to point out that private persons are not entitled to access information reported to the FIC and, in particular, not the content of reports on suspicious and unusual transactions.

“These checks and balances are inherent in the provisions of the FIC Act,” Mitchell said.

Political Bureau

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