The Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) of the Fourth Parliament
has held its first meeting and will be looking at the still-controversial 1999
Strategic Defence Package (SDP).
The R47.4 billion SDP is better known as the “arms deal” and various allegations
of impropriety in the selection of equipment and the contracting for their
manufacture have now been in circulation for 10 years.
According to the Parliamentary Monitoring Group’s minutes of Tuesday’s meeting,
SCOPA chairman Themba Godi said issue “was not finalised in the Third
Parliament”.
He added that a “decision had been taken that anyone who had new information
should present this information to SCOPA. There had been
one submission from Richard Young that needed to
be reviewed, but this process had been frozen pending the establishment
of the new SCOPA.
The Chair said that he would distribute copies of the submission. Provision
would be made for MPs who wanted to investigate the history of the arms deal,
and Richard Young would be approached for further
documentation *1,” the PMG quoted Godi saying.
SCOPA will be meeting every Tuesday and Wednesday.
With acknowledgements to
defenceWeb.
*1Not yet they haven't.
But in the early part of the year I gave then a baksteen kakhuis vol which
should keep them busy for a while yet.