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.
The previous Unaccountable profile detailed Jacob Zuma’s infamous battle with the South African legal system to escape scrutiny for his role in the 1999 Arms Deal. We explored the hard evidence against the former president, from the conviction of his adviser Schabir Shaik to secret code-phrases, encrypted fax messages and million-rand handshakes with a French multinational arms corporation. These actors placed profit over principle and undermined state institutions in an attempt to get away with it.
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Sitting in the dock next to Jacob Zuma is Thales. Unfortunately, local media coverage presents Thales as a sideshow in the long and complex Zuma litigation. It suggests a glaring blind spot which glosses over corporate power to focus only on the elected politicians. But we should not forget that this arms company faces its own charges of fraud, corruption and money laundering, all linked to paying bribes to undermine South Africa’s democratic institutions. The tale of Thales’ involvement in the Arms Deal, and in a series of other corruption scandals, is equally demanding of our attention.
Like Zuma, Thales has spent the last two decades denying any wrongdoing on the part of the company or its employees during or after the Arms Deal. It has vocally challenged court decisions and the conduct of investigative bodies at every turn — essentially, doing all it could to remain unaccountable. It is deeply ironic that it stands accused of bribing Zuma precisely to stave off prosecution, but has relied on delays in the case to try and avoid accountability permanently. This door is now closed after the Constitutional Court dismissed Thales’ latest appeal in early May 2020 to have its charges permanently set aside. Thales, like Zuma, has run out of legal mechanisms to try to avoid accountability and will finally be made to answer these allegations in court. The crème of Europe’s arms trade is finally faced with the prospect of justice on African soil.
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