Steve Kretzmann | Daily Maverick |15 November 2018
The looting of the VBS Bank may be astounding to struggling South Africans, but it is merely a symptom of a banking and auditing system that skirts the law in order to fleece the poor and enrich the rich. This is revealed in a a new report on corporate corruption by Open Secrets, which also illustrates that the Guptas, aided by Nedbank and Bank of Baroda, are certainly not the be-all and end-all of corporate corruption.
This shady world of banking and the way they allow themselves to be used by nefarious organisations and individuals in order to turn profit, without being subject to any customary international law or binding treaty, is detailed in a new report on corporate corruption by Open Secrets.
The Bankers: Corporations and Economic Crime Report was launched on Wednesday night at Community House in Salt River. The hard-hitting 57-page volume takes the struggle for justice forward through a focus on an international corporate system designed to extract wealth from the poor and middle class in service of profits.
At the launch, the theme was clear: Banks serve the wealthy through illicit offshore flows, aiding and abetting corrupt regimes guilty of gross human rights abuses, quietly assisting State Capture, or debiting the accounts of the poorest of the poor for services they never use.
