Publication: Business Day
Issued:
Date: 2007-11-09
Reporter:
The Supreme Court of Appeal's majority decision yesterday to uphold
various appeals in the continuing Jacob Zuma saga is a
major step forward for the prosecution.
However, it does not totally complete the preparatory legal process involved in
what might be described as the "expanded case" and neither does it totally close
off all of Zuma's remaining legal options. In this sense, it's a "two steps
forward, one step back" sort of process.
The two steps forward, however, are big ones. The National Prosecuting Authority
(NPA) has effectively achieved a clean sweep of the
cases before the Appeal Court. As a consequence, it's in a better position to
put its case, and the case itself will now increase in
scope. The initial case against Zuma would most likely have followed the
same broad guidelines as those brought successfully against his financial
adviser, Schabir Shaik. This case involved essentially *1
two charges of fraud, one aimed at a specific incident involving the
payment of R500 000 a year by French arms company Thales, based on information
contained in the encrypted fax. The second leg involved continuing fraud during
which Shaik paid Zuma about R1m and the state's case related to payments up
until 2001.
During the case, however, Shaik admitted continuing making payments to Zuma
after this date. Consequently, the state's expanded case
*2 would logically hope to include these payments, which would bring the
new total to about R3,5m. The document that the state yesterday won approval to
peruse related to these subsequent payments, and thus potentially at least, its
case has been expanded.
In a broader sense, too, the NPA has won a crucial vote of confidence. The Zuma
case was removed from the roll essentially on the basis that it had not got its
ducks fully in a row. Yesterday's decisions vindicate not only the search and
seizure process, but also the NPA's original decision to bring the case.
As far as the one step back is concerned, the prosecution does have at least one
further hurdle to overcome. The NPA yesterday won the right to ask the
authorities in Mauritius to furnish a set of documents that it hopes to use as
evidence in a potential case against Zuma. These include the diary of Alain
Thetard, the then-southern African CE of French arms company Thomson-CSF, now
called Thales. The diary could help place Thetard at a
meeting with Zuma and Shaik where the R500 000-a-year bribe was discussed. *3
So the NPA can now ask for the documents, but whether they will be given
them is possibly another issue. Zuma's legal team could conceivably at least ask
the Mauritian authorities not to hand over the documents. In addition, although
the NPA won a clean sweep of the cases, the appeal court was deeply divided on
many of the issues. It is not impossible, therefore, that a further appeal to
the Constitutional Court will be forthcoming.
Consequently, the probability that the NPA will make a final decision on whether
or not to reinitiate the prosecution against Zuma before the ANC Polokwane
conference is unclear. It's not technically impossible and there is a good
argument that they should not delay. Either way, the pressure on the ANC to
reconsider whether it should hold the leadership elections right now has
increased. It would not be imprudent for the ANC to hold the conference but
delay the election of a new leader until the dust has settled.With
acknowledgements to Business Day.
*1 Nonsense, the case involved two
charges of corruption (Counts 1 and 3) and one charge of fraud (Count 2).
Count 3 involved the payment of R500 000 a year by French arms company Thales.
Count 1 involved general corruption of continuing fraud during which Shaik paid
Zuma about R1m from about 1995 until 2001.
Count 2 involved fraud for illegally writing off an amount of some R1,28 million
in the financials of the Nkobi Group of companies.
Zuma will be charge with at least two counts of corruption similar or identical
to Counts 1 and 3 above.
Zuma will also probably be charged with counts relating to the clearly
non-existent Revolving Loan Agreement (maybe perjury and defeating the ends of
justice) as well as money laundering relating to mechanisms via which Thomson-CSF
effected the transfer of the bribe from France to Mauritius to Nkobi Holdings
via the infamous and bogus Service Provider Agreement as well as via businessman
Vivian Reddy and the building of the tribal village in Nkandla Zululand.
*2 That the amount relating to Count 1 might be increased to
R3,5 million is really neither here nor there because once the threshold of R500
000 kicks in the minimum sentence of 15 years also kicks in.
All this is likely to achieve is making Kemp J. Kemp SC very, very wealthy at
taxpayer's expense while he peruses the extra
93 000 pages of evidence relating to these extra payment at about R100 per page
plus the extra six months in court challenging each and every amount and each
and every page of documentary evidence at about R30 000 per day.
*3 The diary does place Thetard at a meeting with Zuma and
Shaik where the R500 000-a-year bribe was agreed.
"Everyone" has a court-accepted copy of this diary page for 11 March 2000.
If one doesn't believe me, it's evidence item TT2 reproduced below in
low-resolution JPEG format *5.
If anyone wants a better copy, please approach the High Court Durban and Coast
Local Division or send R100 (Euro100 for overseas enthusiasts) to the Save
the Mountain Gorilla Fund *4 and email the payment advice to me and I
will glady provide a higher resolution PDF copy. And there's more, throw in an
extra R10 (or Euro10 as the case may be) for the gorillas and I'll throw in the
diary page for 10 March 2000 Ref. No. TT1).
It's only that Billy Downer SC doesn't want to argue for weeks on end about the
admissibility of the copy and wants the real thing from Mauritius.
*4 There are only just 700 of these poor beasts left upon
this planet and the criminals have killed 7 already this year, along with some
150 of their human guards during the last decade or so.
-
http://www.fauna-flora.org/newsfemalekillings2.php
It makes corruption involving R500 000 per year until ADS starts paying
dividends like a children's picnic.
*5 The diary entry for 17h30 the same evening (a Saturday)
annotated as "C. Steyn" is with Chris Steyn senior manager of Armscor's Radar
Division who had been providing a goodly local pre-bidding intelligence service
to these French criminals.
Chris Steyn was organising meetings with existing Armscor senior managers and SA
Navy officers directly involved in the Arms Deal, specifically the Corvette
Combat Suite, acquisition process and gleaning relevant competitive
information from them before secretly passing it on to Thomson-CSF.
Don't believe me? Make those mountain gorillas happy and I will reciprocate on
their behalf.
Just as a taster :
- "I had a similar discussion with Frits Nortje.......seeing that he is
the Armscor combat suite project manager and would certainly have impact on
discussions I thought it wise to consult him. He echoed exactly xxxx's
sentiments. It was Frits who warned me about the suspicions from the rest of
the industry. I believe we should be discreet in the short term about any
"other" comments. Just a bit of advice, get Frits on ADS's side. He is
influential."
- "I hope this is useful and will get back to you once I've seen the SA
Navy."
Busted?
But there's more, lot's more.