| Publication |
Sunday Times |
| Date | 2013-03-24 |
| Reporter |
Stephan Hofstatter |
TWO contrasting portraits of the flamboyant
59-year-old French arms dealer Jean-Marc Pizano
emerge, depending on who you talk to.
Detractors describe a man who used
guile, charm and
dash to cosy up to arms-deal kingpins and
clinch lucrative deals. “He always seemed to be
too close to people
with power,” said one arms manufacturer.
“It left me feeling uneasy.”
Others described how he used his
relationships with
defence departments to clinch deals.
His flashy lifestyle a £6-million
(R84-million) property in London, immaculate
attire and constant jetting around the world
prompted accusations that he was looting his own
company when it faced liquidation for failing to
pay creditors.
But arms industry sources sympathetic to Pizano
insist that he was merely “overoptimistic”, like
a salesman who sincerely believed he was always
about to clinch the next major deal.
“The man has decades of marketing experience in
this field and an invaluable network of
contacts,” said one. “He always did what was
best for the company, [which]
never paid a
dividend*1 because every cent of profit
was ploughed back into the company.”
Another conceded that he could come across as
arrogant but put this down to his “French
flair”.
Pizano was among a group of French engineers
working for Dassault maker of the Mirage
fighter jet who moved to South Africa in 1984
to set up aerospace company Advanced
Technologies & Engineering (ATE). They had
apparently spotted a potential business
opportunity because South Africa’s ageing Mirage
fleet needed an upgrade that Dassault could not
carry out because of the arms embargo. ATE never
won the contract because the
air force launched
its own secret upgrade programme, but the
company was contracted to work on several
prestige projects, including the Rooivalk
helicopter.
After 1994, Pizano
positioned himself to benefit from the notorious
arms deal, travelling to Malaysia several
times with Schabir Shaik. He later obtained a
lucrative deal for
work on the Hawk fighter trainer jet for BAE.
The company’s South
African agent, Richard Charter, who was paid
more than £26-million (R384-million) in
arms-deal commissions and later drowned in a
canoe accident, became ATE ’s non-executive
chairman.
Pizano rejects the perception that he
“bled the company dry”.
His properties were funded by selling 20% of
ATE’s shares to BAE in 1996 and he later sold
the properties to keep the company afloat, he
said.
He regards himself simply as “an industrialist
[who] had to market ATE” to get the best
possible deals.
French Flair: ATE founder Jean-Marc Pizano
“We succeeded with the Hawk programme as we
were the only
company capable to do the job,” he said.
With acknowledgement to Stephan Hofstatter and Sunday Times.
After Pizano started
ATE in 1984 he would not have had a cent of
capital.
But in 20 years of work he could own an R84
million property in London (and clearly more
besides).
In 1996 he sold 20% of his shares in ATE for at
least R84 million.
That means that ATE was worth R420 million in
1996, almost surely due to its upcoming as good
a done back-to-back deal with British Aerospace
who had the same back-to-back deal with Joe
Modise for the Hawks (the R500 million ATE
avionics contract was only for the Hawks and not
the Gripens).
That means that he also managed to get this R84
million out of the country into the UK.
But Pizano clearly had other properties, other
assets and an expensive lifestyle.
So he would have got alot more than R84 million
out of British Aerospace or elsewhere.
Any South African defence electronics company
could have done this job.
The Hawk was in fact an existing BAe project.
Parts of it had to be locally manufactured for
Defence Industrial Participation (DIP).
His was the only company capable of doing the
job of filling the troughs.
Richard Charter's and Fana Hlongwane's companies
were just one man bands through which influence
and wonga flowed in opposite directions.