Scopa open to renewed investigation
The arms deal inquiry is not yet dead, Themba Godi,
chairman of parliament's standing committee on public
accounts said yesterday.
Godi told the Cape Town Press Club that his
committee, parliament's main watchdog on public
spending, had processed all but one of the new
submissions received shortly before last year's general
election.
If the one still outstanding - a massive file submitted
by losing arms deal bidder Richard Young - changed the
committee's view of the deal, he would be open to a
renewed investigation.
Asked whether the committee might call for a judicial
commission of inquiry, Godi said the rules of parliament
did not in any way prescribe what measures MPs could
recommend.
Godi said Young's 500-page submission included
the first draft *1
of a controversial 2001 report by a joint investigating
team headed by then Auditor-General Shauket Fakie. The
report cleared the government of any undue intervention
and failed to produce evidence of corruption in the
$4.8-billion order for ships, submarines and aircraft.
Young is managing director of C2I2, which lost a bid to
supply navy technology to Thales, a company linked to
Schabir Shaik, who was later convicted of fraud and
corruption associated with the arms deal.
Young fought a three-year court battle to gain access to
documents relating to the arms deal.
He and other critics of the deal, including the DA, have
since alleged that the final report was heavily edited
on instructions from then president Thabo Mbeki and
other senior ministers.
The file currently with Godi's committee includes
the minutes *2 of
a meeting allegedly attended by Mbeki in which
significant edits were ordered.
Young told The Times yesterday that everything in the
report was already in the public domain, but that it
pulled a lot of information together and proved that
there had been top-level interference in the drafting of
the report, which was used by Mbeki to shut down the
investigation.
Godi said all members of his committee had been given
copies of Young's submission and would be asked soon
whether they had found anything in it to follow up.
Related Articles
With acknowledgements to
Brendan Boyle and
The Times.
*1 Not
the first draft - the last draft of the report before it
became the joint report.
And the version that was sent by the JIT to the Arms
Deal Ministers Committee for vetting.
and vetting they did.
They took crucial things out and they put crucial things
in.
This proved two things :
- the JIT Report
is a farce
- Shauket Fakie CA(SA) is a fink
*2 Not
actually the minutes themselves, at least not formal
minutes.
But more damningly, the informal notes taken in a
meeting, probably a meeting of no statutory authority,
where unlawful instruction were given to a Chapter 9
institution to change it findings.
But we know for sure that the meeting was held and that
the draft report was issued to MINCOM prior to the
meeting and for the purposes of the meeting.
How do we know this?
Because one of the documents received under PAISA from
the AG was the covering letter furnishing the draft
report by the auditors to the auditees.
This is not standard practice in a forensic audit, only
a regulatory audit.
Indeed this was no audit, it was a forensic
investigation where a multitude of complaints of
criminal conduct were made.
And a number of instances of criminal conduct were
found.
If the investigators had tried just a tiny bit harder,
then a multitude of instances of criminal conduct would
have been found.
Instances of not just a bitter sub-contractor who lost
R100 million worth of contracts and wasted a decade and
a half of his professional life as well as the business
life of his purely South African company which then
employed 30+ plus South Africans, mostly graduate
electronics engineers, most of whom have since
emigrated, but clear-cut and simple to prove bribery and
corruption amounting to something like R2 billion (in
2000 Rands).
Furthermore, the R2 billion in Arms deal bribes,
underpinning a R30 billion Arms Deal is actually just
the starter for a R300 billion cost of ownership of the
defence equipment for the South African taxpayer.
The SANDF cannot and is on the record in this regard,
fund the operation and maintenance of its Arms deal
equipment.
Hardly any of it is being used and hardly any of it will
ever be used.
It was the The
Wrong Stuff.
And no-one any longer, including and especially Helmoed
Romer Heitman, Arms Deal apologist supreme, can ever say
the SA Navy got the best frigatte deal in the form of
the German MEKO 200AS light frigate and its even lighter
combat suite.
The German bribe agreement whereby Thyssen paid Chief of
Acquisitions USD3 million to Chippy Shaik and a group
represented by him to swing the deal from Bazan of Spain
to the South African Corvette Consortium (consisting of
the German Frigate Consortium, Thomson-CSF Naval Combat
Systems of Frame and African Defence Systems) proves
once and for all against this simple nonsense.
If anyone at all wants to take issue with me on any
of my contentions, then they are more than welcome to do
so.