Publication: Business Day Issued: Date: 2009-03-17 Reporter: Franny Rabkin

Thint Says NPA Agreed Not To Prosecute 

 

Publication 

Business Day
Date 2009-03-17
Reporter Franny Rabkin

Web Link

www.businessday.co.za



The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) should not be allowed to prosecute French arms company Thint Holdings (Southern Africa) and its subsidiary, Thint, because it had previously agreed not to, the companies said in court papers yesterday.

The companies are accused in the NPA’s corruption case against African National Congress president Jacob Zuma. They face charges of corruption, racketeering and money laundering.

They applied yesterday to the Pietermaritzburg High Court for a permanent stay of prosecution, saying the state had breached their right to a fair trial.

Zuma is likely to make his own application for a stay in May.

Thint was charged in 2004 together with Zuma’s former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik. In yesterday’s application, the companies said the NPA had agreed in 2004 to withdraw charges against Thint and to not prosecute either company in future on any charge based on the same facts.

They said this was in exchange for an affidavit by then-director Alain Thetard, saying he had written the now- infamous “encrypted fax”. The fax was alleged to contain details of an attempt by Zuma and Shaik to solicit a bribe involving Thint holding company, Thales International, Thetard and the Thint companies.

After Thetard made the affidavit, former prosecutions chief Bulelani Ngcuka confirmed in a letter that the charges would be withdrawn.

Pierre Moynot, CEO of the Thint companies, said: “Although the letter does not refer to exemption from prosecution ... such immunity was implicit and had been envisaged all along.”

He said the affidavit, which was “potentially incriminating” *1, would “never have been furnished if such exemption was not afforded”.

Subsequent negotiations with the NPA for indemnity for Thint officials in their personal capacities broke down. But Moynot said this should not be confused with the indemnity granted to the companies themselves.

Moynot said that after Thetard’s initial affidavit, he submitted a further affidavit to the NPA explaining the circumstances of the authorship of the fax.

In his second affidavit, Thetard said the “encrypted fax” was a “rough draft” in which he intended to record his thoughts “on separate issues” and it was never typed or faxed to anyone *2.

But Moynot said the second affidavit did not invalidate his first affidavit, and breach the agreement. Nor did the NPA consider it to be breached because it did, in fact, withdraw the charges in the Shaik case, he said.

The Thint companies disputed that the agreement applied only in respect of the Shaik trial. They also said that in Shaik’s appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal, the court “expressed a firm view on what is the very subject matter” of some of the current charges and consequently, it would be “impossible for this honourable court to disabuse its mind” of the appeal court’s findings.

rabkinf@bdfm.co.za

With acknowledgements to Rehana Rossouw and Business Day.


*1       The affidavit, if it could be taken at face value, was not potentially incriminating, it turned the encrypted fax into a red, hot, smoking AK-47 with Thetard's and Thomson-CSF's escargot-encrusted DNA all over it and black powder traces all over their greasy mugs.

But in one of the most cynical French plots since the French nation started fighting the Allies in the Second World War, Alain Thetard in his second affidavit disavowed the meaning of the contents of the encrypted fax.

So it made the first affidavit useless for purpose for the NPA.

So the undertaking not to prosecute Thomson-CSF fell away.


*2      And the NPA used forensics methods to both prove the authenticity and admissability of the encrypted fax.

They found the handwritten original draft and the original typed and printed version. They found copies of the wordprocessed version on a computer and a stiffy disk. They found fax records to prove it was indeed faxed to Yann de Jomaron and Jean-Paul Perrier at Thomson-CSF head office in Paris.

And they got the person who did the typing and the faxing to testify in court that she had done all of this under instruction from Thetard.

So the encrypted fax became a piece of accepted evidence in itself, without the assistance of its author.

It was found to be a executive statement of corruption and got one point of the isosceles triangle of corruption 2 years and four months in the prison hospital.

It is now going to get one other point of the isosceles triangle of corruption 15 years in prison and the last point of the triangle disbarred from doing its dirty business for 20 years..

Pierre Moynot will scuttle back to France with his tail between his legs before the Priority Crimes Unit starts to properly investigate the rest of the criminality that was the acquisition of the corvette combat suite.

Overall one of the biggest injustices ever perpetrated in this country was when the biggest jackass of them all Bulelani Ngcuka made this garlic-infested deal to let off the French company in exchange for withdrawal of the charges of bribery and corruption against it.

This will only be eclipsed if this French company of serial corruption wins a permanent stay of prosecution on the back of the jackass's idiotic conduct.

He was certainly no fit and proper person for that job.