South Africa is ready to cooperate with a German probe into alleged kickbacks paid in the sale of four warships to South Africa in 1999, Minister of Public Enterprise Alec Erwin said on Tuesday.
He said South Africa will assist in the investigation if asked, but added he had received no formal notification on the issue, the South African Press Association reported.
“We remain clear of our view that the major contracts were well managed and very successfully completed,” Erwin said.
Erwin is the South African minister responsible for state-owned industries, including Denel, the loss-making arms company, which benefited from the deal.
News magazine Der Spiegel reported in its Monday edition that prosecutors in the western German city of Düsseldorf were investigating the technology and industrial company Thyssen over suspicions that it paid bribes in order to sell the ships to South Africa.
Prosecutor Peter Lichtenberg said his office was “carrying out an inquiry” focusing on a payment of 30-million German marks ($19,6 million) appearing in the German company’s accounts.
Prosecutors believe the payment may represent an under-the-table payment paid by Thyssen relating to its later sale of four Meko A200SAN patrol corvettes to the South African navy in December 1999.
The navy has since reclassified the ships as frigates. One is in service, one is about to be commissioned and two are still being fitted out at the naval port of Simon’s Town south of Cape Town.
Thyssen confirmed it was the subject of an inquiry but said it was confident the suspicions will turn out to be unfounded.
The magazine reported that German police and judicial authorities had visited sites of the shipbuilders Blohm and Voss, and HDW — both subsidiaries of the German group ThyssenKrupp.
They also visited sites run by another German firm, MAN Ferrostaal — a subsidiary of the German industrial conglomerate MAN, it said.
The 700-million-mark sale of the ships was initially rejected in 1994, Der Spiegel said, but was accepted weeks later after the current South African President Thabo Mbeki — then deputy-president — reviewed the decision. — Sapa-AFP