South Africa’s state arms agency Armscor sold hundreds of millions of rounds of small arms ammunition into the open market in conflict with government policy, Business Day newspaper said on Wednesday.
The newspaper said a secret forensic report in 2005 showed Armscor had sold ammunition for AK-47, R-4 and R-5 rifles to Industrie Spreewerk Lubben in Germany ”ostensibly for destruction and onward sale to companies in the US”.
”[This] has seen the US market flooded with military and police surplus ammunition from South Africa. Apparently the ammunition is openly advertised on the internet,” the newspaper said, citing a copy of the report.
Armscor was not immediately available for comment.
The agency, formed as part of the secretive military apparatus of apartheid-ruled South Africa, vowed to become more transparent with the advent of multiracial democracy in 1994.
Business Day said the ammunition sales could damage South Africa’s reputation as a leader of global efforts to crack down on small arms proliferation.
”The report contains a litany of allegations over Armscor officials exporting ammunition on the basis of expired end-user certificates for Guyana,” it said, adding that it also showed Armscor officials bypassing South Africa’s National Conventional Arms Control Committee.
The newspaper said the November 2005 report by First Consulting also detailed a breach of national security in the export of Ratel infantry assault vehicles with top-secret codes and algorithms in place.
It said in all, there were eight exports of ammunition to Germany between 1998 and 2005 in contravention of a Cabinet decision in 1997 that all surplus ammunition should be destroyed. – Reuters