Do your homework! This was the instruction to the media on Wednesday from minister of public enterprises Alec Erwin during a press conference at the Union Buildings.

He was responding to the allegation in last week's Sunday Times that President Thabo Mbeki took R30-million from German industrial giant MAN Ferrostaal and gave R2-million of it to Jacob Zuma. Erwin accused the newspaper of poor standards of journalism.

What the Minister Said:

Erwin urged the media to consult basic documents and re-read the auditor-general's report following the investigation into the arms deal, saying: "Very basic homework is not being done in the media. The standards of journalism in this regard are exceptionally low."

The Facts:

The Sunday Times was not quoting from the final auditor-general's report that followed the investigation into the arms deal. A huge cloud of doubt has for years hung over this report, drawn up from the three arms-deal investigating agencies ­ the auditor-general, the public protector and the Directorate of Special Operations *1.

The identity of the author or editor of the final joint version of the document has never been made public *2. There has been speculation that the thousand-odd pages of the three agency reports were sanitised and diluted to make up the 380-page joint report. The result of this was that crucial facts and findings were omitted.

The Sunday Times referred to a May 2001 draft report by the auditor-general on his investigation of the submarine programme.

Until last week, the report had never been made public.

As revealed in the Sunday Times, the draft report shows:

The evaluation of the bidders for the submarine contract was skewed and highly suspect;

The auditor-general queried the changing of the overall evaluation formula to favour a preferred bidder ­ the eventual winner, the German Submarine Consortium led by MAN Ferrostaal;

Tipp-Ex was used on the evaluation working papers, contrary to instructions. These corrections were not initialled. The auditor-general questioned what impact this would have had on the overall evaluation process, remarking that someone could have altered the overall score; and

The auditor-general raised questions over the high score given to MAN Ferrostaal's Coega stainless steel offset project.

What the Minister Said:

Asked about the state of offset projects , Erwin reminded journalists that, in a statement issued by the government in 2001, "we made it absolutely clear that in the defence procurement, the equipment was the prime objective" *2.

The Facts:

This is not what the auditor-general found in his draft report.

Erwin made the same comment publicly when he was minister of trade and industry: that offsets could "never justify the decision to purchase defence equipment".

But this is at odds with what the auditor-general found, namely that it was in fact the offset promises that swung the submarine deal for MAN Ferrostaal.

"Had it not been for offsets, which counted a third in the point scoring to determine preferred bidders, different prime contractors would have been selected," says the draft.

The auditor-general wrote at the time: "An important point that seems to be missed by minister Erwin is that the offsets formed part of the evaluation process, and the Germans were selected as preferred bidders on the basis of their technologically innovative steel process."

MAN Ferrostaal's promise to build a stainless steel mill ­ which won them the three submarine contracts ­ never materialised.

What the Minister Said:

Erwin said he needed to touch on the offsets briefly "because it's emerged again in a really absurd way that the offsets were not met. This is not correct ... there are documents that are tabled in reports to parliament. They're available for you to see, as to exactly how these have been met."

The Facts:

The Sunday Times never reported that none of the offset targets were met. We referred only to those that MAN Ferrostaal was involved in.

Had Erwin asked the Department of Trade and Industry to send him the same list it sent the Sunday Times, he would find that MAN Ferrostaal's offset projects are in a mess.

Of its promised projects, only four were complete. Three do not even exist.

With acknowledgements to Megan Power, Jocelyn Maker and Sunday Times.

• the Aermacchi MB339 would have been selected over the British Aerospace Hawk 100 as the lead-in fighter trainer;
• the Bazan 590B light frigate would have been selected over the Blohm+Voss MEKO 200AS light frigate as the "patrol corvette";
• the HDW Type 209 submarine would not have been selected as the coastal submarine.