Schabir Shaik, former financial adviser to African National Congress
president Jacob Zuma, yesterday lost his Constitutional Court bid to reverse the
seizure of his and his companies' assets, worth about R34m.
This could be the end of the legal road for Shaik
in his battle to overturn a 15-year jail sentence handed down in 2005.
The Durban High Court convicted Shaik on the grounds that he and his companies
made payments to Zuma to influence him to use his name and political influence
for the benefit of Shaik and his businesses.
In a judgment in which all judges concurred, except
Judge Sandile Ngcobo who did not participate due to ill-health, Judge Kate
O'Regan said the benefits of the shareholding and the dividends resulted from
Zuma's interventions on behalf of Shaik and his companies.
The assets were the proceeds of a crime, the court ruled.
The high court and the Supreme Court of Appeal said Shaik gained from two
benefits which constituted proceeds of crime.
The first benefit was the value of a 25% shareholding by Shaik's Nkobi
Investments in Thint, formerly known as Thomson-CSF. The shares were valued at
R21m. Thint holds 80% of the shares in African Defence Systems (ADS), a company
forming a consortium that won contracts to provide munition suites for the South
African Navy's new corvettes.
The second benefit was the accumulated dividends received by Nkobi Investments
from its shareholding in Thint, valued at just under R13m. The dividends were
used to pay for the 25% shareholding in Thint.
When Thomson-CSF bought a direct stake in ADS and excluded Nkobi Holdings in
March 1998, Shaik wrote a letter to Thomson CEO Jean-Paul Perrier requesting a
meeting between Zuma and Perrier. On July 2 1998, a meeting was held in London
attended by Zuma, Shaik and Perrier. The meeting undertook to give the Nkobi
group a share in the deal.
"I conclude that the state has established as a matter of fact that both
benefits flowed from Mr Zuma's support for Mr Shaik and the Nkobi group of
companies as evidenced at least by his intervention on July (2) 1998 in support
of the (Shaik's) claim to participate in the acquisition of ADS," O'Regan said.
O'Regan also dismissed Shaik's argument that the court had not established that
a change of heart by Thomson to enable Nkobi to obtain an interest in ADS
resulted from Zuma's intervention.
"The high court found that the decision to include Nkobi
Investments flowed directly from Mr Zuma's intervention. *1"
She said the concern of Thomson was to go into a
partnership with a company that would have as a backer a person of significant
influence in government. She said Thomson had withdrawn from the proposed
joint venture with Nkobi Investments when doubts were raised about its political
connections.
"At the meeting of July 2, Mr Zuma put that doubt to rest. And what is more, it
is clear from Mr Shaik's letters ... that he wanted the meeting between Thomson-CSF
and Mr Zuma because he knew that the French company needed to understand from Mr
Zuma that he supported Mr Shaik and would afford the influence sought."
With acknowledgements to Ernest Mabuza
and Business
Day.
It actual fact, Zuma was an occult shareholder in Nkobi
Investments.
He was kind of the Non-Executive Chairman.
Not only did he have this meeting in London to solve the problem of Thomson-CSF
getting twitchy about Nkobi Investments as its Arms Deal partner, but he also
attended another important meeting with Thomson-CSF in Durban to discuss inter
alia shareholding. Zuma was formally listed as an attendee in both the
handwritten draft minutes and final formal typed minutes of this meeting. Here
Thomson-CSF was represented by Pierre Robert Jean-Marie Moynot, a natural person
representing the criminal juristic person Thomson-CSF.
It is clear that the other a natural person representing the criminal juristic
person Thomson-CSF, i.e. Alan Peter Thetard is a criminal himself in his own
"right", but Moynot both preceded and succeeded Thetard Thomson-CSF's delegate
in Southern Africa and was clearly involved in and privy to all or most of
Thomson-CSF's unlawful conduct regarding its maneuvering with Chippy Shaik et al
of the Department of Defence to secure the corvette combat suite contract.
It's a pity that the NPA has not been able to pin individual criminal charges on
the likes of Moynot.
And it's a pity that the prosecuting authority has not been able to pin
individual criminal charges on Moynot's counterpart in France, in particular
Jean-Paul Perrier, Bernard Paris de Bollardierre, Yves de Jomaron, Michel Denis,
and Alain Peter Thetard.
But all the time that poor old Schabir Shaik and far more fortunate Chippy Shaik
saw their dream of taking control of the South African naval defence business
via ADS and with the financial assistance of Thomson-CSF, the reason why Mandela
and Mbeki was not enamoured with Nkobi Investments was not so much that they did
not likes the Shaiks, but they (at least Mbeki) had their own bumiputerians
earmarked to be the local partner for the corvette combat suites. As least one
of these parties was Reuel Khoza and his CNI Ltd. Initially it did not matter
sop much who the foreign technology supplier was, but later as Thomson-CSF
worked its unsavory and galling "magic" through the corridors of Altech Ltd and
the entire SA Government, DoD, SA Navy and Armscor Thomson-CSF worked out all
the other candidates.
But Shaik had a trump card when Thomson-CSF got the idea that Mbeki and
(Mandela) wanted someone of their own. This was Zuma. Zuma had enough political
clout as Provincial Minister in kwaZulu-Natal, but more as soon-to-be ANC Deputy
President and as such national Deputy President. Thomson-CSF were watching these
political and power developments very closely. Indeed they were receiving
intelligence from a wide range of sources on a very regular basis, including
French Intelligence and very recently retired SA Navy admirals and senior
Armscor managers.
It is clear that Zuma had enough clout to get Mbeki and Mandela to back off with
their own candidate, accept Nkobi Investments as the anointed one (clearly with
Zuma as an occult beneficiary) and then have the credibility to take this
message directly to the chairman of Thomson-CSF International, who switched back
to Nkobi immediately.
Zuma would have known how Mbeki et al were in on the bandwagon on inter alia the
aircraft acquisitions from British Aerospace and Saab, as well as the corvette
platform from Thyssen and the submarine acquisition from Ferrostaal. They were
indeed being greedy by wanting the corvette combat suite deal as well.
So rather than have Zuma on the outside pissing in, they gave him and the Shaiks
the corvette combat suite deal and he's been pissing out quite reliably since
then.
Only then, civil society, inter alia, blew the whistle on the whole Arms Deal
and the entire bumiputerian rotten plan got exposed. To protect themselves,
Mandela and Mbeki had to offer a couple of small fish to the sacrificial alter
of lip service to anti-corruption. These two minnows were Tony Yengeni and
Schabir Shaik who were a combinational of arrogant, stupid, obnoxious and
unimportant enough for their names to float easily to the top of the pile, like
fresh stools at the bar one factory. Joe Modise was the mullet of this small
shoal, but opted out with an earlier than planned meeting with St Peter.
But then by design or accident, Schabir exposed Zuma and the NPA (except
Bulelani Ngcuka - Jackass-in-Chief and NDPP For No Good Reason Other Than Being
Thabo Mbeki's Deployed Cadre and Fixer) reversed the wind direction into of
Mandela's and Mbeki's Johnsonian tent and things have gone very shabbily albeit
excruciatingly slowly since then, indeed, for Messrs Shaik and Zuma.
On the other hand, things haven't gone too badly for Thomson-CSF. Despite being
by far and away the real cause of the flies in the oinkment and regular fillers
of the feedtroughs in Mbeki's pigsties, it was allowed to complete its R5
billion combat suite contract (2008 Rands) without interference from Armscor or
the Department of Defence or the Department of Finance. And it got some more
nice juicy multi-billion Rand contracts without competition, this on the written
instruction from Armscor.
Convict these corporate criminals and then the Americans will chop off the
testicles of this corporate rapist.
Just like BAE Systems, Thales International are trying their damndests to break
into the big time of the US defence market.
So far they are doing a little better every week.
But with a nice conviction for corruption in the RSA or UK, the US will debarr
them from competition.