STUART GRAHAM, Johannesburg | Thursday
ALLEGATIONS that Deutsche Bank colluded with three prominent South African companies to depreciate the rand in 2001 are unfounded, the commission investigating the rapid decline of the currency heard in Johannesburg on Thursday.
Niall Smith, a director of Deutsche Securities, a wholly owned subsidiary of Deutsche Bank, said asset swaps that the bank concluded with packaging group Nampak, chemical producer Sasol and M-Cell were completed ”outside the window of the depreciation”.
”The timing of the transactions was such that they clearly could not have had anything at all to do with the fall of the rand in November and December 2001,” Smith said.
SA Chamber of Commerce chief executive Kevin Wakeford told the commission that Deutsche Bank may have, in transactions with Sasol, Nampak and M-Cell, colluded to depreciate the currency.
These companies have denied being involved in unethical or illegal transactions.
Wakeford based his evidence solely on information he had received from What he calls ‘a reliable source’.
Smith said when the Sasol asset swap took place on February 19 and 20, 2001, the rand increased in value. In February 2001 the currency improved marginally in value.
The Nampak asset swap on June 26 and July 24, 2001, were insignificant in relation to daily volumes traded, Smith said, while the M-Cell asset swap happened in 2002, after rapid depreciation of the currency.
He said the bank had never entered into illegal or unethical transactions.
”The asset swaps the bank entered into were for sound commercial purposes and all the transactions were legal and ethical,” Smith said.
”All three asset swaps were arranged in order to promote the commercial objectives of Deutsche Bank’s clients. For example the Sasol asset swap was designed to assist Sasol in relation to its acquisition of Condea,” Smith said.
He also emphasised to the commission that the three asset swaps were approved in advance by the SA Reserve Bank.
The R25-million commission, headed by Advocate John Myburgh, started its hearings in early March after Wakeford wrote a letter to President Thabo Mbeki on January 8, containing the allegations.
According to Wakeford his letter was only one factor that led Mbeki’s decision to establish the commission.
He said the president had also received information from other sources and advice from his economic advisers before the commission was established. – Sapa