Another encrypted fax. Another French imbroglio. Another cast of colourful characters. As the country singer John Fogerty once sang, its like dé ja vu, all over again. Yet the differences are as significant as the similarities in the second round of the arms deal trial punchfest.

Much of the evidence in the case against former deputy president Jacob Zuma will be a mirror image of the evidence presented in the trial of Schabir Shaik ­ but the meticulousness, some say vociferousness, of the Scorpions’ approach means there will be some twists.

If the recent raids did not make it obvious, it is clear now that the Scorpions have not finished their investigation. The raids were thorough. They included the homes of the accused and others, Zuma’s former offices in the Union Buildings and Tuynhuys, and finance department offices in KwaZulu-Natal.

A sweep this wide opens the tantalising possibility of new names being added to the charge sheet. At the top of this list is the local branch of French arms company Thales (formerly Thomson CSF) ­ either the local subsidiary Thales Holdings, or its subsidiary Thales Ltd, or both. However, in an affidavit justifying the necessity for the searches, Scorpions investigator Johan du Plooy makes it clear no final decision has been taken on this. But it is equally obvious that, in the minds of the Scorpions, some loose ends need to be tied up.

After Thales, the next loose end is an intriguing man whose role in a host of issues has only been hinted at until now ­ Jürgen Kögl. For Kögl, the raids represent a triple blow. First, he has studiously avoided publicity of any kind, despite being involved, at times intimately, in key constitutional discussions, not only regarding SA’s constitutional change but also the Namibian settlement.

Second, it is not helpful for business. Kögl, until three years ago, was involved in a political consultancy with former Progressive Federal Party leader Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert. Van Zyl Slabbert has now retired.

Third, for such a private person, particularly one who considers himself in politics a facilitator rather than a principal, the raid was a deeply personal affront since it suggests active participation in at least some aspect of the arms deal imbroglio.

For people who have never been raided before, it does not sound so bad. But in truth, being raided is rough. Every personal place in your home or office is probed. Every private thought suddenly becomes public. Your children suddenly witness armed policemen marching around your house as though they own the place. Once that court order is handed down, your privacy is gone.

The obvious problem is this: no criminal leaves the paperwork lying around on the desk. Incriminating documents get shredded and burnt and hidden. Without thorough searches, the crime-fighting function of the police can be critically impaired. So the law requires a hurdle of proof, colloquially abbreviated to “reasonable cause”, that must be cleared before a search warrant is issued.

And in Kögl’s case, the springboard the Scorpions are using to clear this hurdle is … wait for it, another encrypted fax. It is déja vu, all over again.

Except it is not. The fax is there, but its contents are confusing. In the Shaik case, the fax had what Judge Hilary Squires described (in reference to a different issue) as “charming Gallic candour”. In the Shaik case the encrypted fax specified the participants (“S Shaik” and “JZ”), the money (“500k ZAR per annum”), and the intention (“protection of Thomson-CSF during the current investigations”). It is worth mentioning that what it needed to be protected from remains, after all this time, trouble and investigation, unclear.

As regards Kögl, the encrypted fax is totally different. It is a much more detailed and formal letter from the then boss of the South African bidding operation in the arms deal, Alain Thetard, to his boss in Paris, Jean-Paul Perrier. The letter refers to a meeting between Thetard and Barbara Masekela, who had just ended a term as SA’s ambassador to France. This meeting took place shortly before the 1999 elections, as the arms deal was being finalised.

The letter says that Masekela “has confirmed the Jurgen Koegl (sic) *1 was authorised to handle matters on behalf of Thomson-CSF and that he had all their confidence”. It goes on to say “Barbara also explained that, for ethical reasons, being an ambassador in Paris until 1998, it was not possible for her to be in a direct business relationship with a French company, which in turn explains her association with J Koegl”.

“Barbara wishes to wait for the next elections (2nd June 99) and for the constitution of the new government before defining precisely the terms and conditions of our co-operation.”

Masekela, according to the letter, had at the time joined the “black business” group of Cyril Ramaphosa, “a talented and influential businessman … considered to be a rival of Thabo Mbeki”.

Masekela had invited Thetard to validate Kögl’s high political trust, which Thetard did by asking the French intelligence service. Its conclusion was a classic piece of intelligence doublespeak: the finding came back that Kögl “would not be connected as well as he was before”, whatever that might mean.

The conclusion can reasonably be drawn from the fax that Masekela was offered a position with Thales. But she decided for ethical reasons that she could not accept it then. The question is whether she was asking Kögl to keep the seat warm for her until after the election? Kögl denies this absolutely.

The Scorpions appear to be intrigued by this seemingly innocuous issue because of what happened two years later. According to the Scorpions, R1,1m was deposited into Kögl company Cay Nominees’ bank account on August 14 2001. Ten days later, R600 000 was paid into Zuma’s Standard Bank account, originating from an unnamed investment holdings company domiciled in an unspecified Emirates state. This deposit was commissioned by an unnamed London bank on behalf of a likewise unnamed firm of London solicitors, Du Plooy says in his affidavit, barely concealing his irritation.

The money was to pay off a bond on the Zuma family’s Killarney flat in which Zuma had been living for years. “It is significant that both the Kögl payment to Zuma’s bond account and Shaik’s seeking money from Thales in settlement of its obligations to pay the bribe to Zuma occurred when Zuma urgently needed funding both for his Johannesburg residence and to settle the debt that had been outstanding for almost a year in respect of his Nkandla building project,” says Du Plooy. “The coincidence of the date is remarkable and there is a reasonable inference, once again, that the Kögl payment is related to Thomson/Thales.”

Kögl operates his many businesses from a century-old, stately white mansion on a hill just off Jan Smuts Avenue in Parktown, Johannesburg. He is short, dapper, and displays much of the classic German-Namibian cultural template that is his heritage; insightful in philosophy, meticulous in affairs of life, raucous rather than witty in humour, and variable emotionally. In an interview this week he seemed at times bewildered rather than spitting mad about his predicament, but then at other times he suggested anger, but not openly.

This duality was most obvious regarding the gross indignity of having his home and office raided. Even after describing the horrible invasiveness of a raid, he declined to say outright that he was angry, partly it seemed out of a desire not to be seen as criticising the general right of search and seizure. He preferred a philosophical approach: “The way these laws are being implemented was not in the minds of the legislators when they passed them. These are powerful laws that require wisdom in their application,” he says. And then adds, a bit at a loss: “There is such a thing as privacy, particularly for minors and spouses.”

Although in the public’s mind he may seem to be cast in the same mould as Shaik ­ as a friend and sometime sponsor of the political elite ­ Kögl is the total opposite; where Shaik is robust, Kögl is demure, where Shaik has a rough edginess, Kögl is decorous and reserved. He agreed to be interviewed reluctantly after being convinced that to close himself off totally would only raise the suspicion of guilt. But the process is unfamiliar and, you get the feeling, slightly unedifying. True to his discreet vocation, he is cautious and most sentences end halfway.

Kögl is a stockbroker by trade, working for Max Pollock before joining a boutique firm called Solms in the early 1990s.

Solms was sold to Investec in 1995, but he stayed on as a political consultant, principally advising on macro asset-class choices.

But his involvement in politics began earlier, after meeting his wife Annamarie at Van Riebeek High School in Cape Town. She was the daughter of Nicholas Louw, brother-in-law of DF Malan. He found himself in the company of the National Party blue-bloods of the time. With his Namibian heritage and these political connections, he found himself thrown into the Namibian process.

Clearly, he had a talent for timely intervention, and he again played a crucial role getting the right wing to accept the advent of the new SA. His role is recorded in passing by Mark Gevisser in his book on President Thabo Mbeki, a section of which was published in the Sunday Times. The extract records a meeting in August 1993, when Zuma and Mbeki slipped out of a national working council meeting at the World Trade Centre to be whisked off in a hired Fiat Uno to a pigeon-racing club in Lynnwood, Pretoria. Gevisser wrote that the car was driven by Mbeki’s “close friend” Kögl, in whose Hillbrow penthouse the Mbekis had been living for the past two years. The secret rendezvous was for Mbeki and Zuma to meet three leading Afrikaners rattling the sabres of civil war: Gen Constand Viljoen and the heads of the Transvaal and Free State agricultural unions, Piet Gouws, and Kögl’s wife’s distant relative, Dries Bruwer.

Kögl carried on playing a discreet role, making himself available for crucial back-channel negotiations, bolstered by the trust established in the early years.

This is all very interesting in a historical sense, but how about this fax? Kögl was clearly reluctant to discuss the case in detail, but was specific about two things. The first is that he was never an agent for any French company, including Thales. He never received any payment from any French company and never acted on behalf of one in the arms deal. Mbeki was concerned, first about concerns the French might have about their pre-1994 role in SA, and second about the use of people Kögl describes as “interlocutors”. He was asked by Mbeki to convince the French companies that, come what may, good relations with the French were considered important by government, particularly because of French-speaking Africa. In addition, they were to respect the tendering process, which meant not involving interlocutors *2.

And what about the favours for Zuma (and Mbeki, it appears)? It is a kind of noblesse oblige. You do it because you can. He just wanted SA’s leaders to be free of mundane issues to allow them to concentrate on the issues of statecraft ­ like the enormous task of “trying to marry African society with that of a modern economy”.

Yes, yes, but what does this fax mean? “The fax is what it is,” he says.

Were you just keeping the seat warm for Masekela? “No,” he repeats. Masekela became a director of De Beers and a host of other companies, but not Thales.

And what about Shaik’s financial dealings with Thales? “I absolutely knew nothing about it.”

All in all, Kögl has an obvious philosophical interest in statecraft and obviously had no need to make money out of the arms deal. On the other hand, his business in political advice rests on political connectivity. Beyond the friendships and the passion that South Africans have for developing a country to be proud of lies a commercial reality ­ giving informed advice. That can mean doing favours when asked.

Between these two poles lies a grey area, an unfolding mist in which Kögl now finds himself perversely caught. It remains to be seen whether the mist will be cleared by the sunshine of truth.

Cohen is editor at large.

With acknowledgements to Tim Cohen and Business Day.