South African private bank FirstRand is expected to go to court this week to protect customer account details on offshore accounts. FristRank will be seeking to prevent a South African magazine from revealling details of customer offshore accounts from its former private banking arm Ansbacher Trust in the 2000 to 2002 period. The magazine is seeking to publish a forensic report by former FirstRand consultant Barry Spitz. The report forms a key part of a legal dispute between the bank and Mr Spitz. FirstRand director Laurie Dippenaar is quoted as saying Mr Spitz had breached confidentiality by unlawfully disclosing to the media information about a customer’s offshore deal. FirstRand spokeswoman Sam Moss said that the financial statements reviewed were working papers and not signed-off financial statements, which explained some errors referred to in the report. Moss said FirstRand would go to court to prevent the magazine from publishing the names of Ansbacher clients and the names of their offshore accounts, as promised in its September issue. Horwarth Forensics, which was commissioned by Mr Spitz to conduct the investigation and help him to prove that he had earned commission based on the income of the local Ansbacher unit, said it based its review on the documents it had been given by FirstRand. MrSpitz went to court in 2001 over R2.3 million which he said was owed to the International Law & Tax Institute, of which Spitz is a member, for consultancy work carried out in 1999 for Henry Ansbacher Trust Services. In a bid to prove he was owed the commission, he requested documents to prove Ansbacher’s earnings. What he received from FirstRand appears to reveal a lot more, including alleged information on Ansbacher’s offshore tax structure and the involvement of some FirstRand clients.