Rogue engineers from South Africa have allegedly been selling weapons secrets to Pakistan, helping that country overcome restrictions on arms sales imposed since the 1999 coup by General Pervez Musharraf.
Last year the Mail & Guardian reported that two senior employees of Reutech Defence Industries in Pinetown, Claude Makins and Ian MacLaren, resigned following an internal investigation into the alleged illicit supply of fuse technology to Pakistan.
The company stated it had no evidence implicating them, instead ascribing their departure to a ”breakdown in trust”.
Now another former employee of Reutech, air weapons specialist Archibald Gordon Campbell, has been arrested and appeared in the Durban regional court last week.
He was not asked to plead and was released on bail pending a trial scheduled to begin in March next year.
The arrest follows an intensive investigation carried out by Reutech and the South African Police Service’s ”crimes against the state” division.
According to a draft charge sheet obtained by the M&G, Campbell is facing 21 counts ranging from fraud to theft and contraventions of the Armscor Act and the Copyright Act.
The charges relate to the export to Pakistan of key fuse components and technical data for air-launched bombs designed by Reutech.
Components and plans belonging to Reutech were allegedly sold to the Pakistani parastatal Air Weapons Complex — via Bachtech, a close corporation privately owned by Campbell.
Campbell’s attorney, Carl van der Merwe, told the M&G his client would plead not guilty to all charges.
Campbell’s case comes on top of the arrest in April of another South African weapons engineer, Warren Lloyd Grobbelaar, a former employee of Fuchs — another company in the Reunert Group that specialises in the design and manufacture of artillery fuses.
Grobbelaar, whose trial in Alberton also begins next year, is accused of using information owned by Fuchs to conclude a R9-million private contract to design fuses for the Pakistani military.
A spokesman for Reunert said as far as the company was aware the two cases were unrelated.
Written questions posed to the Pakistani embassy this week were unanswered at the time of going to press.
Fred Marais, the secretary of the National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC), told the M&G he was aware of the two cases, but that he was not aware of any diplomatic initiative to raise the matter with the Pakistani government.
In 1998 the NCACC, a ministerial committee responsible for monitoring and approving South African arms exports, decided that no new South African arms sales to Pakistan would be allowed. The ruling, however, permits the continued servicing of existing contracts.
According to the latest figures available, South Africa sold armaments and military services worth more than R46-million in 2001.
Marais said the NCACC regarded the cases as a purely criminal matter.
However an Indian diplomatic source told the M&G his country had raised concerns with the South African government over the continuing supply of South African arms technology to Pakistan, including via suspected Pakistani ”fronts” in the Gulf region. India, which has a long history of conflict with Pakistan, is itself a major importer of South African armaments.
Campbell (40) returned voluntarily to South Africa from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates after special prosecutor Torie Pretorius issued a warrant for his arrest.
According to the particulars of a civil claim for R1,8-million, also served on Campbell by Reutech, its former employee is now allegedly working for a company in the United Arab Emirates called Dynaflow International, to which he is alleged to have transferred intellectual property belonging to Reutech.
It is understood that both Makins and MacLaren are also now working in the United Arab Emirates. Makins, the former CEO of Reutech Defence Industries, could not be reached for comment. MacLaren, the former head of the Reutech air weapons programme, was reached overseas, but declined to confirm or deny that he was working with Campbell.
”That’s what you say you ‘understand’, but I’m not prepared to comment,” he said.
Dynaflow, a company that specialises in pipe engineering, said it had not heard of Campbell, Makins or MacLaren.
Campbell’s alleged bid to supply Pakistan with bomb technology was apparently no small project. According to the charge sheet, he used another company as a front to purchase some 50 000 Reutech microprocessors used in the company’s fuses.
He is alleged in 2002 to have exported these to Air Weapons Complex in Pakistan, together with more than 5 000 fuse ”rotors” manufactured on behalf of Reutech and machined to military specifications, as well as other components and technical drawings.
According to the state, Campbell ordered these items to be shipped to Pakistan at Reutech’s expense, when he knew they were to be sold for the benefit of his own company.
Campbell is also accused of stealing and selling to Pakistan:
A data pack relating to an advanced Reutech proximity fuse (a fuse designed to cause a bomb to explode when close to its target, rather than when it strikes a target, thereby causing an impact over a wider area);
A computer disk containing high level design data for so-called ”pre-fragmentation bombs”; and
A floor plan for the construction of a bomb factory that could produce armaments similar to those of Reutech.