SACP condemns corruption by private monopoly banking and finance capital, calls for stronger measures in addition to radical transformation.
16 February 2017
The South African Communist Party condemns in the strongest terms possible, the manipulation of our economy by foreign and local banking and finance monopoly capital, and welcomes the decision of the Competition Commission to refer a case of collusion by foreign and local banks and financial institutions to the Competition Tribunal of South Africa for prosecution. For over 17 years now the SACP has consistently been almost the lone voice, together with its campaign partners, campaigning for the transformation of the banking and financial sector as whole.
There can be no radical economic transformation without transformation of the banking and financial sector. The SACP reiterates its call for transformation of the financial sector – including tightly regulating capital, finance and currency markets and ensuring more investment in productive activity to reduce inequality and create jobs and decent work. The inclusion of a few Black individual faces in the ownership structures of the untransformed banking and financial sector is not radical economic transformation, and will not benefit the overwhelming majority of our people – the workers, unemployment and poor. In particular, the foreign and local private monopoly and oligopoly structure of the banking and financial sector dominant in our country must be brought to an end, by means of, among others, strongly asserting developmental state ownership and co-operative banks and financial institutions.
One of the key objectives of our long standing financial sector campaign was, and still is, to rollback the deregulation or liberalisation of finance, capital and currency markets that was imposed as part of the neoliberal shock therapy package of Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) in 1996 under the stewardship of what we then called the 1996 class project. The deregulation or liberalisation plunged our country in a currency crisis in the early 2000s due to the floodgates of massive capital outflows that it widely opened. It is this same neoliberal policy regime – in addition to lack of transformation – that has opened space for private banks and financial institutions to collude, wallowing in deregulated finance, capital and currency markets.
The banks and financial institutions that must be prosecuted for the grand corruption, which has now been referred to the Competition Tribunal for prosecution, include Bank of America Merrill Lynch International Limited, BNP Paribas, JP Morgan Chase & Co, JP Morgan Chase Bank NA, Investec Ltd, Standard New York Securities Inc, HSBC Bank Plc, Standard Chartered Bank, Credit Suisse Group; Standard Bank of South Africa Ltd, Commerzbank AG; Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited, Nomura International Plc, Macquarie Bank Limited, ABSA Bank Limited (ABSA), Barclays Capital Inc, Barclays Bank plc.
The 10 percent that the Competition Commission seeks from 14 of the banks and financial institutions to be held liable for from their annual turnovers is, though important, actually almost next to nothing compared to the crime that they have committed and its consequences on our economy and people – especially the workers and poor who are languishing in high levels on persistent class inequality, unemployment, peanut wages and poverty as a result of exploitation in production by capitalist bosses and in banking and finance by capitalist banks and financial institutions. Stronger measures are needed, going forward, and the state must take leadership in bringing about those measures.
Issued by Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo, National Spokesperson, SACP, 16 February 2017
