Publication: Business Report Issued: Date: 2005-09-27 Reporter: Sapa

Thales Faces Bribery Allegations on its Home Turf

 

Publication 

Business Report

Date

2005-09-27

Reporter

Sapa

Web Link

www.busrep.co.za

 

Paris - French defence electronics group Thales yesterday denied allegations from a sacked company executive that it paid out millions of euros in bribes.

"The Thales Group formally denies accusations of corruption in France and internationally, lodged against it by a former manager" at Thales Engineering and Consulting (Thec), the company said.

Michel Josserand, the former chief executive of Thec, claimed in an interview with newspaper Le Monde that the paying of bribes by Thales was widespread - in violation of French and international law. "I estimate that Thales must pay out between 1 percent and 2 percent of its global revenue in illegal commissions," he said. Thales posted revenue of E10.3 billion (R79 billion) for 2004.

Josserand also alleged that Thales had "sidestepped the UN oil-for-food programme and delivered chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein's government".

Thales said the group was taking advice on "the means of taking legal action for defamation".

Josserand had told police the company allegedly took part in the construction of an Iraqi chemical weapons plant disguised as a baby milk powder factory, Le Monde reported.

Paris prosecutors are investigating allegations of corruption at Thales after irregularities surfaced in the company's bid to build a tramway in the southern French city of Nice.

Josserand, whose Thec division won the contract, was fired by Thales and placed under formal investigation in May after the group filed a criminal complaint against its former employee.

"The group would like to point out that these allegations have been made by a former manager of this subsidiary, who was dismissed by the group for irregularities committed as part of a contract for the Nice tramway," Thales said.

"Furthermore, the group itself lodged a complaint regarding corruption during this project."

Josserand described himself as a scapegoat now living in fear of his life. He said he had informed police about bribes allegedly paid out for contracts in Greece, Argentina, Asia and elsewhere in France - often via several foreign intermediaries such as construction companies.

"Having said that, Thales was only following the practices of the major US companies *1," he claimed.

"In Russia, in a development aid deal, we were threatened with a significant increase in sales tax. In Cameroon, for a transport contract, we had a tax investigation because we didn't pay enough."

Thales was linked to the Schabir Shaik corruption trial through its South African subsidiary, Thompson, later called Thint.

With acknowledgements to Sapa and the Business Report.

*1  Small US companies may still be involved in bribing foreign officials, but in general, both the US as a whole and large US corporations cleared up their act in the late '70s and 80s of the last century.

Why, because it became a law in the US and they took it seriously. Up until recently, in France bribes could be claimed as cost of sales in foreign contract - dinkum. More recently, there has only really been lip service paid to the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.

Thompson-CSF had a sophisticated and secret written plan, promulgated to all its foreign regional representatives, including Alain Peter Thetard, on precisely how to circumvent OECD.

In the Schabir Shaik case, the Service Provider Agreement were found by the learned judge and his two gentleman assessors to be unlawful special vehicle to facilitate the flow of funds from Thomson-CSF to Jacob Zuma via Nkobi Holdings via TCSF Mauritius.

In the Jacob Zuma case coming up, the new learned judge will have to contradict the old learned judge if the accused is to escape the long arm of the law.

This is why the call for having one's day in court very quickly became a call for not having one's day in court.

QED

Just when will TCSF have its days in court?