Durban : There was no objective reason why President Thabo Mbeki could refuse permission for the Heath Special Investigating Unit to investigate the arms deal.

This was the word from former judge Willem Heath, who took the stand at the corruption and fraud trial of Durban businessman Schabir Shaik yesterday.

"I have no doubt, that if objective consideration (had been) applied (to the matter) the president would have had no choice but to issue a proclamation," Heath told the court.

He said that he was contacted at the end of 1999 by the now president of the Independent Democrats, Patricia de Lille, who said she had received information about the arms deal and wanted to hand it to his unit to be investigated.

To do this the unit had to get a presidential proclamation. But, Heath explained, the unit had learnt from past experience that these proclamations would be granted only with hesitation or not at all when the subject was controversial or sensitive. The unit therefore decided it would gather a substantial body of reasons why it should be allowed to investigate the arms deal.

He told the court that he had discussed the matter with the auditor-general, who published a special review of the arms deal in 1999. The court had heard from government auditor James Edward van Heerden that the conclusion of this review was that there was a deviation from acceptable procurement practices during the arms deal for which no plausible explanation could be given. He also said that they advised that a special investigation be launched into the matter with a specific focus on the contractors and subcontractors involved.

"When the auditor-general brought out their report," Heath explained, "we decided that we would base our application for a proclamation on their discovery of irregularities."

The unit specifically wanted to investigate the validity of the arms contracts and if the deal was "in the public interest".

He further explained that the parliamentary standing committee on public accounts then decided to have a thorough investigation into the arms deal, involving his unit, the public protector, the auditor-general and the director of public prosecutions. While they were discussing the budget for the probe, the representative for the public protector said that his instructions were that they no longer felt the Heath Unit was necessary to the probe.

"The information that we had available was much stronger than mere allegations," Heath told the court.

With acknowledgements to Estelle Ellis and the Cape Times.