A HANDFUL of South Africans including myself, objected in 2005, when Barclays Bank applied to take over Absa.
Predictably, such objections were rejected by the then finance minister, who hailed the takeover as a huge vote of confidence in post-apartheid SA. The Barclays Libor scandal was exposed in 2012, and yet again, nothing was done.
Barclays Bank was a major instrument of British financial plunder of SA during the colonial and apartheid eras. Barclays was by far the largest foreign creditor when SA defaulted on its foreign debts in 1985. Given that history, it remains inexplicable that the bank was ever allowed to return to this country.
The BAE and BAE/Saab arms deal contracts are being financed by Barclays for 20 years until 2019, and are still outstanding. The default clauses of the loan agreements have rightly been described as potentially catastrophic for SA. They are a textbook example of odious Third World debt entrapment.
Meanwhile, Barclays has been repeatedly fined by US and other regulatory authorities for forex, Libor and other scams including manipulating the gold market. Compounding the bank’s looting of this country, the conflicts of interest are such that it is hardly coincidental that the former minister’s wife is the CE of both Absa and Barclays Africa.
SA’s credit rating is now threatened with downgrading to junk status. It is past time we "smelled the rat".
Terry Crawford-Browne
Via e-mail
Barclays CEO Bob Diamond. Picture: REUTERS/DYLAN MARTINEZ
A HANDFUL of South Africans including myself, objected in 2005, when Barclays Bank applied to take over Absa.
Predictably, such objections were rejected by the then finance minister, who hailed the takeover as a huge vote of confidence in post-apartheid SA. The Barclays Libor scandal was exposed in 2012, and yet again, nothing was done.
Barclays Bank was a major instrument of British financial plunder of SA during the colonial and apartheid eras. Barclays was by far the largest foreign creditor when SA defaulted on its foreign debts in 1985. Given that history, it remains inexplicable that the bank was ever allowed to return to this country.
The BAE and BAE/Saab arms deal contracts are being financed by Barclays for 20 years until 2019, and are still outstanding. The default clauses of the loan agreements have rightly been described as potentially catastrophic for SA. They are a textbook example of odious Third World debt entrapment.
Meanwhile, Barclays has been repeatedly fined by US and other regulatory authorities for forex, Libor and other scams including manipulating the gold market. Compounding the bank’s looting of this country, the conflicts of interest are such that it is hardly coincidental that the former minister’s wife is the CE of both Absa and Barclays Africa.
SA’s credit rating is now threatened with downgrading to junk status. It is past time we "smelled the rat".
Terry Crawford-Browne
Via e-mail
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