Publication: Business Day Issued: Date: 2006-06-08 Reporter: Wyndham Hartley Reporter:

DA Again Asks Mbeki If He had Arms Meeting

 

Publication 

Business Day
Date 2006-06-08

Reporter

Wyndham Hartley

Web Link

www.businessday.co.za

 

President Thabo Mbeki has been called to re-examine his memory to see if he can remember a 1998 meeting with the French arms company Thomson-CSF that lies at the centre of allegations of corruption in the multibillion-rand arms deal.

Democratic Alliance MP Eddie Trent used the occasion of Mbeki’s budget vote in the National Assembly to yet again ask him if he could remember such a meeting.

He said he had been asking the question for more than a year and had been told only that Mbeki could not remember it.

Thomson-CSF featured in the trial of Schabir Shaik, who was former deputy president Jacob Zuma’s former financial adviser. In the trial it was alleged that the firm was involved in a R500 000-a-year bribe to ensure Zuma’s protection of its interests in the arms deal tender process.

“There is a very simple question to which I have been trying to get a very simple answer for over a year now, and that question is the following: Have you, Mr President, in any capacity, met with representatives of the French company Thomson-CSF on or about 17 December 1998?”

“Instead of a yes or a no, the only response from your office is that you ‘do not recall such a meeting’. Such a simple question, Mr President; why are you unable to give the country an answer?” asked Trent.

Mbeki will respond to the debate today and, while he is obliged to respond, MPs will watch with interest to see if he does.

Trent suggested that Barbara Masekela, the former South African ambassador to Paris, might be able to help because, according to a fax from Thompson-CSF, she had organised the meeting in question.

He said if Mbeki’s answer was another no, then that would close the matter. But if it was a yes, “then the problem becomes more substantial”.

“In 1998, you were head of the ministerial committee overseeing the arms deal. A secret meeting with Thompson-CSF, one of the bidders for the procurement package, would have amounted to a gross violation of tender procedures,” Trent said.

With acknowledgment to Wyndham Hartley and Business Day.