The Competition Tribunal has dismissed a last-gasp urgent application by Iqbal Survé's Sekunjalo group to force Nedbank to reopen its closed accounts.

News24 reports that in a two-page ruling, the tribunal's three members dismissed Sekunjalo's application for Nedbank to be ordered to reverse the 3 December closure of its accounts, but declined to grant Nedbank’s request that the group be hit with a punitive costs order.

Instead, it ordered each party in the case to pay its own costs.

Survé and Sekunjalo had launched their account reopening litigation after the Competition Commission recently found that the banks that had closed the group's accounts may have violated competition law.

Nedbank argued that this was the ‘flimsiest’ of reasons for the accounts to be urgently reopened and pointed out that the Competition Appeal Court had found in separate litigation that there was ‘no evidence in the record that any of the banks directly co-ordinated with each other in refusing to deal’ with the group's companies.

Such evidence of collusion was crucial to showing that the banks had violated competition law, the bank argued.

Nedbank remains adamant that its decision to close the Sekunjalo accounts was driven by the serious red flags raised about the Sekunjalo Group during retired SCA President Lex Mpati's inquiry into allegations of corruption at the Public Investment Corporation (PIC).

It found that the PIC’s investment in Sekunjalo group companies showed a ‘marked disregard for PIC policy and standard operating procedures’ and demonstrated ‘malfeasance’.

Full News24 report

See also full Business Day report