This week Open Secrets publishes the second in a series of profiles on the corporations and middlemen implicated in the multibillion-dollar Arms Deal of the late 1990s. This week we focus on the company at the heart of Zuma’s Arms Deal corruption scandal and the co-accused in their corruption trial, the South African subsidiary of French arms company Thales.
, including a 1988 three-way negotiation that provided for the provision of updated missile systems through a clandestine channel in Chile, then under the rule of notorious dictator Augusto Pinochet.
It later emerged that the Arms Deal procurement process was littered with these kinds of inconsistencies, illustrating knowledge of insider secrets and clear conflicts of interest which ensured the selection of certain suppliers over others — something we will continue to explore in upcoming instalments of Unaccountable.
Thales thus engaged in an extensive process of local business acquisitions and buying of political influence by cutting in companies with vast political connectivity in order to ensure its selection in the deal. But that is not all it stands accused of. What then ensued was a cover-up — and the allegation that Thales bribed Zuma to protect it from investigation or prosecution linked to its other conduct.
These delays were crucial in allowing Zuma to continue to pursue his presidential aspirations. Zuma was elected as the president of the ANC in 2007 and subsequently of South Africa in 2009. It was this position of power which enabled him to oversee the disbandment of the Scorpions — an independent agency that had up to then successfully investigated and prosecuted serious organised crime and corruption.
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