The British government has launched a formal investigation into allegations that a white Zimbabwean businessman — one of the richest men in Britain — has broken UK and European sanctions by supplying aircraft parts to the Zimbabwean air force.
The allegations against the international financier John Bredenkamp have been made in a United Nations report into the ”illegal exploitation of natural resources” in the Democratic Republic of Congo, published last month.
In the past few days both the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, and the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, have confirmed in parliamentary answers that an investigation has been launched. In the first answer to the Tory MP Michael Ancram, Straw said: ”We are aware of allegations of past arms dealing activities by John Bredenkamp.”
On Monday Hoon told the Labour MP Paul Farrelly, who accused Bredenkamp of sanctions-busting in the Commons in March: ”The government certainly takes seriously all credible reports of misuse or diversion of UK-exported equipment.”
The UN report says that Bredenkamp, founder of the Ascot-based sporting agency Masters International, ”has a history of clandestine military procurement”.
While Bredenkamp admits he broke sanctions for the Rhodesian regime of Ian Smith, he denies any sanctions violations since then. He said in a statement to the Guardian that he took ”great exception to any allegation of wrongdoing”, and described the report as ”hopelessly misleading and inaccurate”.
His 720-million pound fortune has placed him as the 33rd richest person in Britain, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. He is registered in the UK as a director of 11 companies.
The report says he is an active investor in a brokering concern called Aviation Consultancy Services, which acts as an agent in Africa for major European defence contractors, including BAE Systems. BAE Systems supplied 12 Hawk jets to Zimbabwe in the early 1980s, but an arms embargo was imposed on the country in May 2000 in protest at the violent treatment of President Robert Mugabe’s opponents. The EU followed suit in February this year.
The UN report says: ”Mr Bredenkamp’s representatives claimed that his companies observed European Union sanctions on Zimbabwe, but British Aerospace spare parts for Hawk jets were supplied early in 2002 in breach of those sanctions.”
The panel cites internal documents, which the Guardian has seen, from one of Bredenkamp’s companies, Raceview Enterprises, which supplies logistics to Zimbabwe’s defence forces. A memorandum dated May 17 2001 details aircraft spares worth $3-million.
In a lengthy explanation sent to the Guardian, Bredenkamp’s representative agreed that ACS acted as a broker for Raceview, which reached a general supply agreement with the air force in August 2001. But he said the aircraft spares were legitimately exported from European manufacturers and not from BAE Systems or the UK.
The representative enclosed a letter from ACS to the air force in April this year saying that because of the EU embargo two suppliers (whose names have been blanked out) had decided to suspend all shipments to Zimbabwe. The country has aircraft from Italy, Spain and France.
Although BAE Systems acknowledge that ACS is ”one of our many advisers in Africa” it denies supplying Hawk spares in breach of sanctions. ”We did not supply any spares to Zimbabwe and we do not believe any were delivered, because we believe Zimbabwean Hawks are not flying and have not been for two years,” Richard Coltart, BAE’s head of news, said. ”We investigated these allegations and made sure we hadn’t done anything wrong, even by accident.”
Zimbabwean newspapers have suggested that the Hawk spares were bought from Kenya.
In reply to the report’s allegations that Bredenkamp’s companies had improperly exploited Congo’s natural wealth, his representative said the conclusions were ”either false or inaccurate, and in context maliciously defamatory”.
”Many of the statements and allegations contained in the report are substantially at odds with the considerable information and documentation voluntarily provided,” the representative said. – Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001