He said Zwane later concluded the meeting by commenting that “he found it surprising that other banks had refused to attend the IMC meeting of government considering that banks received their licences from government”.
“I also found it to be a very strange statement. I think it felt like a form of a threat.
“It was also a technically inaccurate statement‚ because banks do not receive their licences from government. They receive their licences from the Reserve Bank‚ which is constitutionally an independent body.
“I left the meeting with the impression that the IMC (inter-ministerial committee) was focused on two key issues: to try and determine if there was collusion among the banks in the closure of bank accounts and‚ secondly‚ to determine whether Nedbank would have the appetite to step in and become the primary transactional banker for the Gupta group of companies.”