The Democratic Alliance (DA) is to ask National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka to get the Scorpions to investigate the ”supposed government-to-government oil contract” between Nigeria and South Africa.
”The Scorpions’s mandate is to investigate organised crime and high-level corruption, and the prima facie evidence certainly points towards the latter,” DA spokesperson Ian Davidson said on Friday.
Government’s response to the Mail & Guardian newspaper’s initial expose was to ”claim that it was a private deal and had nothing to do with the South African state”.
”However, this has been refuted by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which certainly considers the South African Oil Company (SAOC) contract to be on a government-to-government basis,” he said.
”This, together with the close government connections of the South African-based sister company to SAOC Cayman, provides a very strong case for an investigation by South Africa’s elite corruption-busting unit.
”There is little doubt that South African taxpayers have been misled, and they may have been effectively defrauded of millions of rands in revenue from what was announced by the South African government, and understood by the Nigerian government, to be a government-to-government contract.
”What remains to be established is, if we were defrauded, exactly who defrauded us, and who are all the beneficiaries of the deal.
”In particular, it needs to be established whether there is any South African connection to the 25% undeclared shareholding in SAOC Cayman,” Davidson said.
However, the United States-based oil company Camac last week ”refuted any inference of wrongdoing” in its dealings with Nigeria, as reported in the M&G.
The newspaper wrote that a lucrative Nigerian crude oil contract destined for the South African government was taken up by SAOC, an affiliate of Camac.
The report alleged that the contract was secured with the aid of President Thabo Mbeki in 1999, and diverted to an off-shore company with no benefit to South Africa.
”Instead, the company’s local incarnation features figures linked to African National Congress [ANC] interests,” the newspaper claimed.
The Camac Group said in a statement last Wednesday that SAOC, registered in the Cayman Islands, was one of 18 companies that, in 1999, applied successfully for a contract from the NNPC to buy and lift Nigerian crude oil.
”Most oil trading companies are registered in tax-efficient jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands due to the thin margins and the large liability or exposure that oil trading entails.
”There are no South African citizens on the board of South African Oil Company Cayman, nor does it have any South African citizens among its shareholders,” the statement read.
”A letter from the NNPC allocating the contract to South African Oil Company was sent in error to the South African High Commission in Lagos. The letter was subsequently re-issued to South African Oil Company, the applicant.” – Sapa