Publication: The Times
Issued:
Date: 2008-12-14
Reporter: Buddy Naidu
Sandi Majali hit the limelight when his company, Imvume Management, received
several government oil deals,
including one for more than R1-billion *1.
A 2004 UN report named his company as being involved in the
Iraqi government’s “oil for food” scandal.
In 2004 the Sunday Times reported how Imvume had paid R40 000 for an ANC dinner
to host Iraq’s deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, who was in the country.
Weeks after the dinner, Majali accompanied
then ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe to the Middle East
on a nine-day trip. His company was later given a large oil allocation from the
Iraqi regime.
Then in early 2002, Imvume controversially won a tender to supply the South
African government’s oil company with four million barrels of Basrah Light oil.
In December 2003, according to the Mail & Guardian, state-owned PetroSA paid a
R15-million “advance” to Imvume in respect of the company’s supply of oil
condensate. Majali then “donated”
R11-million of this to the ANC and made other payments.
The party said in December last year that it had
repaid the R11-million donation.
In 2004, when asked about his trips with Majali, Motlanthe said: “I
have been to many countries with him. We have been to
Iraq twice, to
Nigeria and Angola.” He said the trips were to solidify the “good relationship
the ANC had with Iraq’s ruling Baath Party". Compiled by Buddy Naidu
With acknowledgements to Buddy Naidu and The Times.
*1 Typically the profit margins are 5% to 10%, maybe even
higher for the dodgy Iraqi deals.
So that's a cool R50 million to R100 million per deal.
A few of these and some Arms Deals (there are more than one of these as well),
soon took the ANC's piggy bank from a few tens of millions of Rands in the red,
to about R1,5 billion in the black.
*2 It's cheap at the price.
Bheki Jacobs (May He Rest In Peace) told me a couple of years back that one of
the participants in one of these oil deals received 0,5% commission into his
personal offshore bank account.
That amounted to about R750 000 per year - on a R150 million per year deal - and
these deals go on for some years.
That was one of the smaller deals, I think the oil coming from Niger.
With Motlanthe also visiting Angola and Nigeria, also two oil-rich states like
Iraq and with "wild west" oil sales regimes, what was he doing on these trips.
Or, like Mbeki, will he forget the nature of the visits and meetings?
That participant is a big chief.
That participant is a big thief.
They're as thick as thieves.