IT IS easy to understand Tony Yengeni's bitterness at having become the most prominent subject of public suspicion among all the corruption allegations that have come to surround the multibillion rand arms procurement package.

Even if the worst-case estimate of the favour he received from prospective bidder DaimlerChrysler Aerospace is accurate a 47% discount on a R314000 motor vehicle it is hardly worth the damage it has done to his reputation and the stress it has added to his life. In an industry where bribes are often measured in tens of millions of dollars, Yengeni, by this measure, is small fry.

The same applies to the degree of influence he may have had over the final allocation of contracts although he is probably being unduly modest in suggesting he was totally without influence. While it did not select contractors, Yengeni's defence portfolio committee was influential in determing the types of equipment that should be purchased. There was more in the package for aircraft manufacturers than tank producers.

By his own account, Yengeni paid somewhat more for the said vehicle than is alleged, and that for a "damaged" (although apparently repaired) 4x4, implying a discount of 26%. Further, he is but one of a large number of recipients of generously discounted cars. And even the most generous such discounts pale into insignificance next to some of the other allegations being investigated (and next to the potential impact on the fiscus of the procurement package as the value of the rand declines).

So one can understand Yengeni's desire to state his case as he did by placing advertisements in a number of Sunday newspapers. Unfortunately, his manner of doing so has not, at this stage, advanced his cause. His account leaves a number of questions unanswered, and he has chosen not to make himself available to discuss them further.

The different accounts of the price he paid for the vehicle and its state of repair require detailed investigation. European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, the consortium supplying defence equipment of which DaimlerChrysler Aerospace is now a part, and which has suspended its SA chief, Michael Woerfel, who arranged the sale of several of the discounted vehicles has offered a different account.

Yengeni does not explain the eightmonth gap between his purchase of the car and the signing of a financing contract. And, most importantly, he does not even begin to explain why he was purchasing a private motor car from a defence company which he knew was tendering for an arms contract, whose shape his defence portfolio committee was influential in determining during the defence review. This is so even if, as a self-confessed Mercedes aficionado, he had already "owned about two Mercedes Benzes".

Finally, he offers no explanation for the timing of the advertisement coming as it did several weeks after he declined to give the same kind of information requested of him by Parliament's ethics committee, which was investigating his failure to declare the acquisition as a gift. If the advertisements themselves were paid for by any source other than his own pocket, we trust he will remember to declare it on this occasion. 

With acknowledgement to Business Day.