No wrongdoings in arms deal – commission

Various calls were made since early 2000 for the establishment of a commission of inquiry to investigate allegations of wrongdoing in the Strategic Defence Procurement Packages and today, President Jacob Zuma announced that there were no such findings and the commission does not make any recommendations.

Zuma said, “Government had been of the view that any findings pointing to wrongdoing should be given to law enforcement agencies for further action. There are no such findings and the Commission of Inquiry does not make any recommendations.”

The commission was chaired by Justice Willie Seriti of the Supreme Court of Appeal; Judge Hendrik Thekiso Musi, then-Judge President of the Free State High Court; and Judge Francis Legodi of the North Gauteng High Court and the final report, which consists of three volumes, was delivered to Zuma on 30 December last year.

Zuma said, “I undertook to process the report and in due course, make further communication on the matter. Having considered the contents of the report and the findings thereof, I have taken a decision to release the three-volume report to the public.”

Included in the commission’s terms of reference were the following:

•  The rationale for the Strategic Defence Procurement Package; in other words why the country needed it.
•  Whether the arms and equipment acquired are underutilised or not utilised at all.
•  Whether job opportunities, anticipated to flow from the package, have materialised at all.
•  Whether any person or persons within and/or outside the government of the Republic of South Africa improperly influenced the award or conclusion of any of the contracts awarded and concluded, and if so whether legal proceedings should be instituted against such persons and what form they should take.
•  Whether any contract concluded is tainted by any fraud or corruption capable of proof, such as to justify its cancellation, and the ramifications of such cancellation.

The Commission conducted its inquiry for a period of four years, exceeding the two years it had been initially given to do the work. The inquiry involved conducting private investigations and interacting with entities and persons with knowledge of the Strategic Defence Procurement Package. Public hearings took place between 19 August 2013 and June last year, and 54 witnesses appeared before the commission. The key witnesses included former president Thabo Mbeki and former ministers of his cabinet. Serious allegations had been made by individuals in the media that investigators abroad had collected evidence of wrongdoing linked to some of the winning bids. To verify these assertions and obtain the evidence that had been gathered, the commission undertook visits to the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, the USA, Switzerland, Germany and Liechtenstein.

Zuma said that after the extensive process of gathering information from various sources, the commission said that no evidence was found as well through the commission’s own independent inquiries.

“The key members of the technical teams that conducted the extensive evaluations of all the offers, gave evidence and refuted any suggestion that they may have been unduly influenced or any way manipulated to produce the relevant scores or rankings… There was also no basis whatsoever for disbelieving the evidence submitted by the members of the Inter-Ministerial Committee in this regard. The commission concluded by stating that there was no room for it to draw adverse inferences, inconsistent with the direct, credible evidence presented to it, in respect of all material aspects of the terms of reference,” Zuma said.