David O'Sullivan : "To that big story today in the Mail & Guardian and the Business Day, the evidence of irregularities emerging from confidential documents, irregularities in the multi billion rand Arms Deal. The documents have been given to defence contractor Richard Young, a man we've spoken to many times on Talk Radio 702. He is contesting the Arms Deal. His company, C²I², was denied one of the subcontracts. Well, we've got Richard on the line from the Southern Cape. Richard, thank you very much for chatting to us. Good afternoon to you."

Richard Young : "Good afternoon David."

David O'Sullivan : "This evidence, now, explain to me how you came into possession of the early draft reports of /from Auditor-General, Shauket Fakie."

Richard Young : "Okay, we started off by applying under the Promotion of Access to Information Act almost immediately after the final Joint Report was issued in November, for access to these drafts. The office of the Auditor-General immediately rejected our application. Finally with a number of court cases and aborted appeals etc., we've had two orders of the High Court, in the Pretoria High Court for the office of the Auditor-General to make these drafts available to us."

David O'Sullivan : "Now, explain to me the differences then of/in the information that is contained in the drafts of the final report and the final report itself. What immediately stands out?"

Richard Young : "Well, apart from my area, which I don't really want to concentrate on now, unless you want me to, the most stark thing in this latest revelation of information which we received in early December, is in the other chapters, specifically the chapters regarding the acquisition of the Hawk and the Gripen aircrafts, where the findings of the investigators who did the work are completely different to that which are published in the final version. I mean, they come up with short, sharp, concise findings, such as, and I quote "that the whole process was fundamentally flawed, that the Minister of Defence was involved in pushing the Hawk and the Gripen, that the minister basically gave an unfair advantage to British Aerospace and SAAB for their offerings." That's completely different to what you see in the final version of the report."

David O'Sullivan : "What happens next in your bid to contest the Arms Deal, Richard? How will you use this information now?"

Richard Young : "Oh no, I don't intend to use this information at all. We submitted our Particulars of Claim in actually August 2002. I'm waiting for a judgment out of the Pretoria High Court regarding the Exception against our damages action. We have plenty, sufficient evidence for our own case. What I'm trying to show the public, was the sinicism of the Public Protector, the other constitutional watchdogs such as the Auditor-General, how they allowed findings that they had made to be convoluted after what they called due process, which is showing their preliminary findings to their auditee. Now, that is not due process in a forensic investigation or in a forensic audit."

David O'Sullivan : "Richard, did this merely confirm what you believed all along or are these startling changes in your opinion?"

Richard Young : "Look, we always believed that there were negative findings, negative inferences, but they are very stark to a degree of being surprised, even myself, of how clear and concise they were and specifically where they bring in somebody at a ministerial level, being the Minister of Defence, but there are also some quite, unfortunately the word beautiful is not correct in the instance, but where they find that the Chief of Acquisitions, the Chief of Armscor, actually threatened their own employees who dared go against their directives in the acquisition process. I mean, those kind of things have been taken out and those kinds of things are surprising for me."

David O'Sullivan : "Why was it necessary for you to bring the court action to get these draft reports if in the final analysis they are not going to be used to strengthen your legal case?"

Richard Young : "No, I didn't say that. We've had five different deliveries of documents."

David O'Sullivan : "Oh my goodness!"

Richard Young : "I mean, I've received probably 20 000 pages in five different tranches. The first lot are useful for our case, but the draft reports that we've received subsequent to our lodging of our claim are not directly, they are relevant, but not directly required in our case. So, it is a fairly long and complicated matter this one."

David O'Sullivan : "I understand yes and also this particular story is quite dense as well so, I'm not going to go into the details, I will just refer our listeners to the two articles. The one in Business Day, one in the Mail & Guardian. Richard, just quickly, where do you stand now with your legal case? You mentioned you were awaiting a judgment from which court?"

Richard Young : "From the Pretoria High Court. The defendants took our case on Exception and I've now been waiting 11 months for the judge to issue a judgment, which basically allows us to proceed either directly into the court case or to the Appeal Court, but I've got this uncomfortable feeling that this judgment is being delayed in order to delay our further legal action against the government."

David O'Sullivan : "Okay, Richard, well, I know we will be talking to you again, thank you very much for your time. Richard Young there, Managing Director of C²I², defence contractor. On the line from his home in the Southern Cape. It's 17:14."

With acknowledgements to David O'Sullivan, Richard Young and Radio 702.