In a significant ruling – given the Treasury’s pending application seeking a declaration that it may not intervene in the relationship between the big four banks and the Gupta family – the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) yesterday found Absa Bank’s bona fides could not be questioned when in 2013 it closed the accounts of businessman Fana Hlongwane and his companies, notes Legalbrief.

According to a Business Day report, Judge Nomonde Mngqibisa-Thusi said the applicants had asked for more information on the closure of the accounts because they were considering their legal options, believing the action was unfair and a breach of their constitutional rights. Mngqibisa-Thusi said Absa had given the applicants some of the requested documents and reasons for its decision.

The judge noted Hlongwane was implicated in the arms deal commission’s investigations, which made him ‘a high-risk client’. Absa was entitled, in terms of their contractual relationship, to terminate on reasonable notice. It had ‘no obligation’ to retain clients whose monitoring in terms of money laundering measures would be more onerous compared with the benefit in retaining them.

Mngqibisa-Thusi noted the applicants had nowhere said which of their rights they sought to protect, as required by the Act. This indicated they ‘might have been on a fishing expedition to find out circuitously what information the commission had on them’.

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