Durban - “You’re a clever man - wait until the court decision to reinstate corruption charges against Jacob Zuma on his role in the arms deal.”
That’s the message from self-proclaimed arms deal whistle-blower and Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille to Schabir Shaik.
She was responding to Shaik’s comments that he intended challenging his guilty conviction following the release of the arms deal report which found no evidence of any wrongdoing by those involved in implementing and negotiating the deal.
“It is most unfortunate that Shaik was made the fall guy when others like Zuma got away scot-free,” she said. “It’s unfair that Shaik alone had to pay the price when there were others involved. But unless he has new evidence which clears his involvement in corruption around the arms deal, I feel he has exhausted all legal avenues available to him.
“He is a clever man, so he must carefully consider his options after the North Gauteng court decides on reinstating charges against Zuma.
“That decision is due at the end of this month or, latest, next month.”
Shaik, however, hit back, calling De Lille an opportunist, and challenged her to produce evidence of any corruption he was involved in on the arms deal.
“She has always maintained it was her evidence which led to my conviction. What evidence? She failed to present any of this before Judge Squires and later admitted that her sources were unreliable and may not have been accurate.
“She also claimed to have a list’ of people who were involved in the arms deal but never presented this in court,” said Shaik.
In response, De Lille laughed off Shaik’s challenge, insisting that she presented the list’ of names of those involved in the arms deal corruption as part of her dossier to Parliament in 1999, which eventually led to the successful conviction of Shaik, and former ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni on a fraud charge.
Controversy over the arms deal has plagued the ANC and Zuma’s presidency since he began his term and although the report now calls for no further investigations to be conducted, De Lille says the issue is far from over.
“The investigations are not over just because the report says so.
“The ANC investigated themselves in this report and cleared themselves of any wrongdoing. How can we just accept that?
“There are many issues which were not addressed, including the massive discounts given for luxury cars to 31 people involved in the arms deal.
“After returning from Germany where I obtained the names of those involved in this, I then handed over this information to investigators probing the arms deal.
“The response I got was that they could only investigate information under instructions by the National Prosecuting Authority, which never gave that instruction even after I approached them, and so this information was never included in the Seriti commission,” added De Lille.
The discounted luxury cars were given by German national Michael Woerfel, the former managing director of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (Eads) which won a share of the lucrative R43 billion deal.
Eads held shares in its sister company, DaimlerChrysler South Africa, which gave the massive discounts to those involved in the arms deal.
As part of a plea bargain with the state, Yengeni, who served as chairman of Parliament’s joint standing committee on defence at the time, was eventually convicted of fraud for his role in the discount he requested from Woerfel. He was cleared of corruption.
Corruption charges against Woerfel were later withdrawn following Yengeni’s acquittal, and no further action has been taken since then.
The Mercury