APA-Cape Town (South Africa) South Africa’s Competition Commission should investigate the nearly 30 local and foreign commercial banks operating in the country that have been accused of alleged price fixing involving the local rand currency, former president Thabo Mbeki has said.
Speaking on the sidelines of the ‘Cape Town Conversation’ conference in Cape Town on Sunday, Mbeki said the 27 banks complicit in the scheme to manipulate the rand between 2007 and 2018 should be brought to book by probing their activities further.
One of these banks, Standard Chartered, was recently fined over US$2.2 million by the Competition Commission after it admitted to engaging in the malpractice.
While Standard Bank is one of two firms to be outed for the banking scandal, scores of other banks have denied colluding to inflate their profits, according to press reports.
Mbeki told journalists that the claims were worrying and that the Competition Commission must get to the bottom of the issue.
“I thought I saw that some of the banks are saying they are ready to cooperate, to tell the truth, including about who else was there,” Mbeki said.
He added: “I think it’s very important that action should be taken against the culprits. I think it’s a very important process, and it’s important that some of the banks want to come clean.”
However, he said the matter about the manipulation of the rand was nothing new.
“It happens with all of these tradeable currencies. I remember an instance when they did that in London with the British pound,” Mbeki said.
NM/jn/APA