YET more dirt came to light this week on South Africa’s notorious arms deal when a Swedish television channel aired a special report implicating two trade unions and Saab, manufacturer of the Gripen fighter jets.

The investigation, reported in our sister newspaper Business Report yesterday, described a secret agreement between Saab, Swedish metal union Svenska Metall (SM), and the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa). Two former officials of Numsa, Philimon Shiburi and Petrus Ngcobo, revealed that in the late 1990s the union had been offered R10 million for a training school on condition that Numsa support the purchase of the Gripens. Saab and SM have denied there was such a deal, but the two officials say they saw the agreement during a Numsa investigation in Sweden in 2000 aimed at clearing up these and other allegations of corruption, including R40m paid in “commissions” by Saab and its British partner BAE Systems and possibly directed through unions in Sweden and South Africa.

The Numsa probe was inconclusive and the school was never built. But the revelation adds another dirty little piece to the arms deal jigsaw.

The story is a reminder to those fighting corruption to focus not only on the people who allow themselves to be corrupted but also – and especially – on the people who corrupt, and who use very subtle and clever means to do so. Someone who would resolutely refuse the offer of money for personal enrichment might just hesitate when the bribe is offered to fund a training school, especially in exchange for what might seem like an innocuous endorsement of one aircraft over another.

Numsa’s Irvin Jim, who has long opposed the arms deal – and what a dilemma such opposition poses for unions whose members work in weapons manufacturing companies – says the union will co-operate fully with the Seriti commission of inquiry. The whole country is waiting for that commission to find answers to one big question: was the arms deal fraudulent and corrupt, in which case we can legally repudiate it, save the enormous amount of money we committed, and, crucially, avoid the even bigger cost of maintenance and parts on a suite of weapons which we probably never needed anyway.

With acknowledgements to Cape Times.

British Aerospace paid nearly R1 200 million in commissions for the lumped-together R15 000 million Hawk and Gripen deal.

Of this  around R1 005 million was for covert commissions which are bribes and around R200 million which are overt or legitimate commissions.

British Aerospace had about a dozen covert commission agents bribing all and sundry in the South African government and defence establish to pull off the so massive and unlikely of a project win, including getting SAAF tier structures changed and DoD values systems changed. That took big bribes and British Aerospace saw to it that it had a real bunch of beauties including British, South African, Zimbabwean and Namibian low-lives to do the dirty work.

Of the the lumped-together R15 000 million Hawk and Gripen deal, about one third was for the British Aerospace Hawk and two thirds for the Saab(70%)/British Aerospace(30%) Gripen.

The shy Swedes were quite happy to let the low-class British Aerospace scum lead the bribery and corruption campaign, partly because this conduct normally is offensive for most of them, but mainly because British Aerospace are simply so experienced at conducting business in this way. It is after all British Aerospace's normative business model.

But certain more desperate Swedes, mainly in government, trade unions and Saab, are as guilty as the odoriferous Poms as much of the filthy lucre flowed directly from them, both during the please and thankyou phases of this greatest assault o the South African fiscal corporate that it has ever been forced to endure.

Dirt indeed.