OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Wednesday
A FORMER SA Defence Force intelligence chief of staff has told the Pretoria High Court of his “dissatisfaction” about a lack of information on the end destination and ultimate use of millions of rands transferred to overseas bank accounts on behalf of the shadowy Project Coast.
Project Coast was the SADF’s chemical and biological warfare programme headed by apartheid chemical expert Dr Wouter Basson.
General Witkop Badenhorst, who was in charge of Coast’s budget in the late 1980s, said the responsibility was taken away from him at his own request because he felt uneasy about the lack of information on the project.
Junior officers used to bring him pieces of paper with instructions by Basson or Surgeon General Niel Knobel, telling him that it served as authorisation for the transfer of millions of rands to overseas bank accounts, he said.
He objected to the system of payment, especially because the auditor-general’s office could only trace the money up to the point where it was paid into the overseas bank accounts. After the money was transferred, they did not know what happened to it.
Similar to many of his fellow senior SADF intelligence officers, Badenhorst knew very little about Project Coast, other than the existence of the project and its aims.
Badenhorst did not know of Basson’s alleged links to the intelligence communities of Libya and East Germany, and also did not know about Basson’s visits to Russia at the height of the apartheid era. He was also not aware of a number of local and overseas bank accounts and companies in which Basson allegedly had an interest.
Badenhorst confirmed earlier evidence that the SADF had on numerous occasions flown Unita leader Jonas Savimbi to a variety of destinations, including to Europe and America, but said a Military Intelligence Lear jet was used for the purpose.
Badenhorst knew about rumours that there were chemical attacks against Unita, but was not aware that protective clothing or detection sets were ever provided to the movement.
Basson has pleaded not guilty to 61 charges ranging from murder to fraud and drug trafficking. Some of the fraud charges relate to a deal involving protective clothing belonging to the SADF allegedly being sold for Basson and his business partners’ profit.