Crawford-Browne slams skewed focus on arms deal

WHILE the corruption trial involving former President Jacob Zuma has been postponed to July 19, activist Terry Crawford-Browne has slammed the focus of the arms-deal investigation, questioning why after more than 20 years, despite substantial evidence, the main role-players of the scandal are still not being held accountable.

The Zuma trial has been set down for July 19, after his defence team called for the recusal of state prosecutor Billy Downer. The prosecution has requested more time to respond, hence the matter has been set down for the July date.

Zuma has argued all along that he is the victim of a politically-motivated witch-hunt by his opponents.

The charges against Zuma, currently the focus of the scandal, emanate from the procurement program during 1998 and 1999, where some officials – including South African politicians – received bribes during the purchase of defence weaponry involving foreign companies.

Zuma, who pleaded not guilty to all counts of corruption, fraud and money laundering, had allegedly only benefited by R2 million, whereas the ‘big fish’ in the R60-billion arms deal got even more.

To date, only two convictions have been made, although substantial evidence has linked several companies and politicians, through forensic investigation reports conducted nationally and internationally, to the arms deal scandal.

Those convicted were Zuma’s associate Schabir Shaik and former chief of the parliamentary defence committee Tony Yengeni, for the discount he received on the Mercedes Benz 4X4 he bought from European Aeronautical Defence Space Company, linked to the $5bn arms deal.

The company also admitted to providing cars to more than 30 influential people in the government and private sector.

Crawford-Browne argued that as much as he despised Zuma, he is a “small fish” compared to politicians such as former President Thabo Mbeki, former minister Trevor Manuel – who signed off on the agreements underpinning the arms deal in 1999 – and Alec Erwin, the then minister of trade and industry, among others, who he says played a huge role in the deal.

“Zuma was not even in the national government when the deal was being decided. Mbeki had been in Germany in 1995, negotiating with the Germans

on the outset of the warship,” Crawford-Browne argued.

“Zuma was not involved in the deal, but after reports were released on the matter, foreign parties involved were worried they would be exposed, and so were looking for a cover-up, and through Schabir Shaik, they found Zuma and Mbeki.”

He alleged that the three main beneficiaries of the scandal were businessmen Fana Hlongwane, the late Richard Charter and the late John Bredenkamp. “This, while Hlongwane had been the assistant to the late defence minister Joe Modise, and Tony Georgiades the main bagman for the German frigates and submarines.

“Geogiades’s job was to bribe ANC leaders and, in particular, Mbeki to support the warship contracts,” Crawford-Browne alleged, and the person who had at the time lobbied for two German companies, of which one was Ferrostaal – that allegedly paid R300m to secure the sale of submarines to South Africa. Investigation reports revealed that Ferrostaal paid a R30m bribe to Mbeki, who gave R2m to Zuma and R28m to the ANC, while Georgiades –through his companies Mallar Inc and Alandis – was paid €16.5m (by Ferrostaal),” said Crawford-Browne.

The Sunday Times also reported in 2008 that Ferrostaal allegedly gave former president Mbeki R30m in bribes (Mbeki denied the claims) and that, after sharing this with Zuma, before he became president, Mbeki gave some of the money to the ANC as a donation.

The reports mentioned by Crawford-Browne, which Independent Media has seen, further revealed that Ferrostaal and Georgiades signed an agreement whereby Georgiades would receive 2.5% of the contract value for supporting Ferrostaal. An affidavit by

a principal investigator of the British Serious Fraud Office (SFO) revealed that after investigations, they found that former FNB chairman Basil Hersov, through his company FTNSA Consulting, also benefited by $5 000.

Hlongwane, through his company Hlongwane Consulting, had also received commissions from BAE Systems, which included a retainer of R192m between 2003 and 2007, and R51m through SANIB (SAAB) among other payments, the SFO report stated.

The bribes that Zuma is said to have received also included a R500 000 annual retainer from Thales – the French company also implicated in the bribery scandal – paid through his former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, whose brother, Shamim ‘Chippy’ Shaik, was suspended from the Department of Defence.

Crawford-Browne has since stressed that investigations should now focus on the “big fish”, and make use of evidence presented which had previously been overlooked.

The North Gauteng High Court, in 2019, had set aside the findings of a commission report released by Judge Willie Seriti in 2015, after he (Seriti) cleared South African politicians of corruption, though there was substantial evidence presented linking individuals and companies and how each one benefited, he said.

Seriti and his team, who presided over the inquiry, are now facing an investigation by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) after a recent complaint was lodged by Open Secrets and Shadow World Investigations.

Asked why Zuma remains the focus of the arms-deal scandal when there are other players, Crawford-Browne explained that at the time of the investigations they believed that if Zuma was made the fall guy, it would block

any investigations, because he had not been in power then.

“There were reports that Zuma, in his early days, was in favour of exposing any corruption and malpractices, but had turned around in 2000 with a 13-page letter (explaining) his signature to Gavin Woods, which derailed parliamentary investigations into the arms deal.”

In 2001, Mbeki admitted he authorised Zuma’s controversial letter, entailing key information about the corruption case, while Zuma claimed that although he signed as leader of government business, it was actually written by Mbeki, working with a cluster of ministers handling the fallout over the arms deal, according to an IOL report.

“We suspected at the time that it (the letter) was not written by Zuma but by Mbeki, who confirmed it later, as it just was not in Zuma’s character. But he got sucked into it at that time, and therefore, I would say Zuma was scapegoated by Mbeki.

“I believe Mbeki and Manuel were more corrupted by power. They were obsessed with power more than money and didn’t need the money; Zuma did. Mbeki was also heading the Cabinet sub-committee which decided on the arms-deal matter at the time,” said Crawford-Browne, adding that Manuel, who in his early days stressed that they could not afford the arms deal, was pressured by Mbeki and others, and buckled, while Erwin had an obsession for more steel plants, even though South Africa already had an overcapacity in steel plants.

Manuel, in 2014, defended the arms deal while testifying at the Seriti Commission. Former defence minister Mosiuoa Lekota denied that individuals, including the ANC, benefited from the deal, reports confirmed.

But former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein, in his book After The Party, describes how Manuel pressured him to drop the SCOPA investigation into the deal, and related how a senior member of the NEC informed him that funding from arms deal companies enabled the ANC to fund the 1999 elections, said Crawford-Browne.

Mbeki also admitted, under cross-examination at the Seriti Commission, that bribes, including donations by Georgiadis to the ANC on behalf of the German warship consortia, were received.

In a letter dated September 18, 2018, to Justice Raymond Zondo, chairman of the State Capture Commission, Crawford-Browne said: “I learned in 1998 that BAE was laundering bribes to ANC MPs ahead of the 1999 elections via two Swedish trade unions. Through contacts in London, I asked the British government to investigate, and Scotland Yard was instructed to do so.

“I was informed it was then not illegal in English law to bribe foreigners and, accordingly, there was no crime for Scotland Yard to investigate. This was also the case in Germany, where bribes to foreigners were then tax deductible as so-called ‘useful business expenses’.

“160 pages of affidavits in my possession from the British SFO and the Scorpions detail how and why BAE laundered bribes of R2.1bn to secure its arms-deal contracts, to whom the bribes were paid, and which bank accounts in SA and overseas were credited. These affidavits were submitted to the North Gauteng High Court in November 2008, as part of an application for authority to raid BAE’s premises in Pretoria and the Western Cape. As a result of those raids, 460 boxes and 4.7 million computer pages of evidence were seized.

“The Scorpions held evidence against the German Frigate Consortium (GFC) and German Submarine Consortium (GSC). The basis of my application to the Constitutional Court in 2010 was that, given this huge volume of evidence, it was irrational and so unconstitutional for Zuma to refuse to appoint a commission to investigate the arms deal.

“Nonetheless, all this evidence was left in two shipping containers in Pretoria, un-investigated by the Seriti Commission,” he told Justice Zondo.

He said that the commission at the time pleaded it would be too expensive to index the documentation and instead spent R137m of public money, wasting five years on a further cover-up of the arms-deal scandal.