The Constitutional Court has confirmed that African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma’s intervention enabled his friend and former financial adviser Schabir Shaik to benefit corruptly from the arms deal.
The finding came as part of the court’s decision to dismiss Shaik’s appeal against the confiscation of his assets. Almost four years after his criminal trial started the state can now withdraw R33,8-million from the fraudster’s bank account.
Shaik is serving a 15-year jail term at the Durban Westville prison for enjoying a generally corrupt relationship with Zuma, soliciting a bribe for the ANC president from French arms firm Thales and cooking his company’s books. He was recently admitted to a Durban hospital because of high blood pressure.
Acting Deputy Judge President Kate O’Regan wrote the unanimous judgement that dealt the final blow to Shaik’s last hopes of keeping his money. She said that Judge Hilary Squires and the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) had decided correctly that Shaik’s benefits from the arms deal were the result of criminal activity.
The first benefit is Nkobi Investments’ 20% indirect shareholding in African Defence Systems (ADS) worth R21-million. ADS was awarded the R1,3-billion contract to provide combat suites to the navy’s four new corvettes.
Shaik’s second benefit is the R12,8-million his company received in dividends from this investment. ADS is jointly owned by Thales’s South African affiliate Thint (80%) and local company Futuristic Business Solutions (20%).
O’Regan confirms what Squires and the SCA found: that Shaik’s stake in the arms deal was a direct result of Zuma’s intervention during a meeting in London on July 2 1998.
After Shaik originally negotiated with Thales to be its local partner, the French got cold feet and excluded Shaik from the original ADS shares structure. Shaik testified in his trial that this was because of President Thabo Mbeki’s intervention.
This decision was reversed after the London meeting with Zuma, during which the then deputy president confirmed to Thales that Shaik was a suitable BEE partner.
The court also confirmed the SCA’s ruling that Shaik bribed Zuma to buy his influence.
”[The] finding of the SCA is conclusive of the issue before us. The payments were made by Mr Shaik in order to influence Mr Zuma to promote Mr Shaik’s business interests and, in attending the meeting in London in July 1998, Mr Zuma did, as a matter of fact, promote Mr Shaik’s interests.
”I conclude therefore that the state has established, as a matter of fact, that both benefits in issue in this case flowed from Mr Zuma’s support for Mr Shaik and the Nkobi group of companies, as evidenced at least by his intervention on July 2 1998 in support of the appellants’ claim to participate in the acquisition of ADS.”
Businessman Bob Glenister will approach the Constitutional Court next week to hear argument on an urgent basis on why the Scorpions, which investigated Shaik, should not be disbanded. The Pretoria High Court ruled this week that it does not have the jurisdiction to decide the unit’s fate.