SAP bribery admission a positive step

There are two ways to look at this week’s Gupta Leaks developments as they relate to international software giant SAP.

The first is that the German-headquartered company is doing the right thing in coming clean on dealings it had with Gupta-linked companies.

The second is the cynical one that, now that the company is being investigated by American authorities, they could do nothing but damage control. The reality is probably a bit of both.

It seems clear that a number of multinationals with South African operations showed a reluctance to look too closely at anything involving the Guptas, outside the increasing figures in the profit column of the ledger.

So, Bell Pottinger, KPMG and now SAP have all used the “plausible deniability” tactic, which is the position that the top brass were not aware of what their underlings in this country were doing.

The really telling aspect of the SAP story this week was not so much about the company itself, but about the fact it had owned up to paying kickbacks to the Gupta network to get business from state-owned enterprises.

That Gupta network has, leech-like, been sucking the blood from government coffers by becoming the “middle man” in many mega-deals.

It goes without saying that such a third party is unnecessary in most cases – but that still leaves the question about which senior parastatal manager and, behind the scenes, which government minister allowed these leeches to fasten on to the body of a company owned by the government.

That phenomenon of the parasites who feed off a healthy entity and weaken it in the process, is exactly what is threatening to prevent us from realising the South African dream of economic growth and eradication of poverty. SAP’s admission is an important step towards squashing the blood-suckers.

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