EDITORIAL: Not just banks being judged
What’s really disturbing is what appears to be a lack of any rigour on a case that is so politically explosive
The stage is set for a tense trial at the Competition Tribunal, where the Competition Commission will have to defend its decision to prosecute 18 foreign and local banking entities for collusion in the face of robust challenges from 14 of those entities. The commission referred the case to the tribunal in February. The banks are accused of fixing prices and dividing markets in the rand-dollar trading market between 2007 and 2013. The case involves arcane issues involving currency traders in New York allegedly agreeing in Bloomberg chatrooms to collude to fix bid-offer spreads and the like. The banks include entities as far removed from SA as the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group and at least half of them are neither registered banks nor authorised foreign exchange dealers in SA. One of the banks, Citi, which does have a South African banking licence and is an authorised dealer, has already reached a R70m settlement with the commission, which the tribunal has approved. Another ...
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