Justice Director General Menzi Simelane has defended the South African government against claims that it stonewalled British and German requests for cooperation in probing the arms deal and criticised the Scorpions for liaising with Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO).
Simelane spoke to the Mail & Guardian at the government briefing on the arms deal in Pretoria on Wednesday, at which Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin defended the R60-billion transaction against mounting calls for a judicial inquiry.
German prosecutors have dropped their investigation into bribes allegedly paid by ship-builders ThyssenKrupp to South African politicians and officials. The M&G has reported claims that South African obstructiveness contributed to the cancellation. Disputing these, Simelane said the German prosecuting authorities told him that the Swiss government’s lack of cooperation in providing access to records was to blame.
The M&G was given a copy of a letter written by Simelane on October 25 last year to the public prosecutor in Düsseldorf, who was investigating alleged ThyssenKrupp bribes to secure South Africa’s corvette contract. In it, Simelane requests more information on the German allegations. The letter says: ”It is indicated that the consortium paid significant bribery sums in order to win the bid — with Thyssen Rheinstahl Technik GmbH being the leading company within the consortium”.
It asks for details of the bank accounts into which bribes were allegedly paid and the owners of these bank accounts, including the identification numbers of the South African officials and ministers allegedly promised payments or who received bribes after the bribing of foreigners was criminalised in Germany in February 1999; and of bribes allegedly part of the official bid submitted by the German Frigate Consortium.
Simelane said that these ”clarifications” had to be satisfied before the police or Scorpions could help. ”We had to overcome these hurdles before anything could be done.”
He said the last correspondence he received was a letter by Martin Fischer in the Düsseldorf prosecutor’s office on November 7 last year, saying ”we will contact you as soon as possible” on the request for further particulars. ”They still haven’t come back to me,” Simelane said. This, according to him, was ”understandable” because the Thyssen-Krupp probe had been cancelled.
Simelane emphasised that the request for mutual legal assistance by Britain’s SFO was a ”state to state” request and not one between agencies. He slammed the Scorpions for engaging the SFO directly, arguing that certain processes had to be followed before interaction on evidence and fact could begin.
The Scorpions registered its own investigation into the arms deal with Britain’s BAE Systems earlier this year. Simelane said he was surprised to receive correspondence in March this year from the National Prosecuting Authority, addressed to him by the SFO in September 2007.
He was trying to establish how communication addressed to him landed up at the prosecuting authorities and was only given to him six months later.