Ciaran Ryan | Moneyweb | 10 February 2020 |
Listening to the testimony of bankers before the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into allegations of state capture, you might believe they were unwitting victims of the Guptas and acted quickly and virtuously to throttle their corrupt ways by closing their bank accounts in 2016.
It turns out they may have been part of the capture project.
A report by Open Secrets and London-based Shadow World Investigations released on Thursday (February 6) puts bankers, lawyers, accountants and consultants squarely in the frame of the state capture project.
Entitled ‘The Enablers: The bankers, accountants and lawyers that cashed in on state capture‘, it pulls together the intricate threads of a campaign of corruption that is staggering in its reach and audacity.
Dirty tricks
The report outlines the tools of money laundering: smurfing and layering being two of the most common.
Smurfing is where you break up large sums into smaller amounts to defeat anti-money laundering reporting requirements. The money is scattered around in a blizzard of transactions designed to hide the source and eventual destination.
Layering conceals the source of the money through a series of transactions and bookkeeping tricks.
To help cover their tracks even further, the Gupta stoked racial tensions in SA by promoting the meme ‘white monopoly capital’ to divert attention away from their looting.
This reprehensible chapter in SA’s recent history is outlined in gory detail in The Enablers.
Here are the key figures in the report:
