Judgment has been reserved in the High Court in Bloemfontein in the preservation order matter involving the controversial businessman Atul Gupta and the Bank of Baroda.
The legal representatives for Atul Gupta and the Gupta companies have argued that the High Court in Bloemfontein has erred in granting the preservation order to freeze the assets of the Bank of Baroda and the R10 million his in personal account.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) argued that various deposits were made to the Bank of Baroda from the Estina project.
The money left the account as soon as it was deposited.
NPA’s Advocate Thato Ntimutse argued that there is a string of illegitimate transactions in the account and that Bank of Baroda failed to keep proper records of their banking. The court heard that the bank does not operate within the prescripts of the law.
At some stage it received a fine of R11 million from the Reserve Bank.
Ntimutse says: “The fact of the matter is… the Bank of Baroda runs an account which is like a trust account of an attorney, where all the money comes into a single pool, entries are made by someone at the bank to say a certain amount of money has gone in for a certain client.”
The Bank of Baroda’s Legal representative refuted the NPA’s allegations.
Luc Spiller said: “The National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) also went on to make various allegations about the inadequacy of record keeping Baroda.
“The response to that, there has no bearing upon this case… as because it has nothing to do with the principle of co-mangling. The instances of inadequacy are wrong records.”
The case which was set down for two days has been adjourned; judgement will be delivered next Friday.
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