Publication: Business Day Issued: Date: 2007-08-30 Reporter: Ernest Mabuza

State Disputes Thint Assistance Claim

 

Publication 

Business Day
Date 2007-08-30

Reporter

Ernest Mabuza

Web Link

www.businessday.co.za

 

The state yesterday disputed assertions that French arms company Thint always co-operated with investigators probing alleged corruption in the country’s arms deal.

The appeal was made to the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein. The state said the company did not easily surrender crucial information as required.

Thint is appealing against a Pretoria High Court judgment passed last year which ruled that the search and seizure at the company’s Pretoria offices were lawful. Thint wanted the Supreme Court of Appeal to order the state to return the documents to the company.

Thint counsel Peter Hodes SC told the court yesterday Thint CEO Pierre Moynot had offered the investigating team his affable co-operation and there was no reason to believe that Thint would no longer co-operate.

“There was nothing to show that Thint knew they were going to be charged as they had an agreement with the state that charges against them in the fraud and corruption trial of convicted Durban fraud Schabir Shaik were withdrawn.”

Senior counsel for the state Wim Trengove said events of the past few years showed that Thint was not always willing to submit information that could incriminate the company.

Trengove said while the state obtained Thint’s co-operation to help convict Shaik for corruption and fraud by asking its former director Alain Thetard to admit being the author of an encrypted fax, Thetard later wrote another affidavit in which he claimed he had crumpled the note and did not fax it to France.

Trengove said Thetard’s claims were contradicted by his former secretary, Susan Delique, who told the Durban High Court during Shaik’s corruption trial that Thetard gave her a hand-written note to type and fax to his superiors in France and Mauritius. “For them (Thint) now to argue that we should have told the (issuing) judge that Thetard could be trusted, is quite fanciful,” he said.

The fax detailed that Shaik had arranged with Thint for former deputy president Jacob Zuma to be paid R500 000 a year to protect Thint from the arms deal investigation.

Hodes said Transvaal Judge President Bernard Ngoepe, who issued the warrant for the search and seizure of Thint’s premises in August 2005, would have to consider whether a subpoena had been served on Thint before granting the warrant.

On Tuesday, the state appealed against a Durban High Court judgment which ruled that raids on Zuma and his lawyer Michael Hulley’s homes and offices were conducted with unlawful search warrants.

With acknowledgements to Ernest Mabuza and Business Day.