Thales — how to buy a country Open Secrets: Unaccountable 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.
Jacob Zuma – Comrade in Arms Open Secrets: Unaccountable This week Open Secrets publishes the first of a number of profiles on the corporations and middlemen implicated in the multibillion-dollar Arms Deal of the late 1990s. None of these companies has been held to account.
McKinsey & Company – Profit over Principle Open Secrets: Unaccountable Big consulting firms take no credit and they accept no blame. This philosophy has enabled McKinsey & Company to profit with ease from work with authoritarian regimes, troubled businesses and corrupt state-owned enterprises. In South Africa, their work at Eskom and Transnet on some of the most infamous State Capture contracts reveals a story of a corporation willing to place profit above principle, and sometimes allegedly even the law. This week Open Secrets focuses on evidence in The Enablers investigative report that shows that McKinsey has not been held accountable for its role in State Capture. While it profited from its role in these contracts it shies away from meaningful responsibility for serious economic crimes.
FNB and Standard Bank – Estina's Banks Open Secrets: Unaccountable The infamous Estina Vrede Dairy Project was supposed to direct public funds to ‘empower’ indigent Free State farmers and develop local agriculture. Instead, almost all of the money was looted to benefit the Gupta enterprise. This week Open Secrets focuses on two of the banks that facilitated this injustice. As shown in The Enablers Investigative Report, it takes more than a few corrupt politicians to capture the state. It requires banks to facilitate suspicious payments and the extraction of money from the country. In the case of Estina, Standard Bank and FNB have questions to answer.
HSBC – The World's Oldest Cartel Open Secrets: Unaccountable If Transnet was a golden goose for the Gupta family and their associates, then global banking giant HSBC played the role of tending their illicit nest eggs. This week Open Secrets examines the role of a key global enabler in the State Capture network. As shown in The Enablers investigative report, it takes more than a few corrupt politicians to capture the state. It requires a global financial machinery – and HSBC was an important bank in this network.
Nedbank and the Bank of Baroda – Banking on State Capture Open Secrets: Unaccountable Who laundered money for the Gupta acolytes and used the opportunity to cash in on State Capture? A new investigative report, ‘The Enablers’, co-authored by Open Secrets and Shadow World Investigations, details the role of bankers, accountants, consultants and lawyers in State Capture. Submitted to the Zondo commission, the report details case studies which are the focus of the next five weeks of Unaccountable. Open Secrets starts with the role of Nedbank and the Bank of Baroda.
National Conventional Arms Control Committee – Handmaiden to Human Rights Abuse? Open Secrets: Unaccountable South Africa's arms trade regulator has failed in its mandate to monitor the export of weapons to countries that, among other things, abuse human rights, or wage war against their own citizens. This begs the question, who will guard the guards themselves?
Rheinmetall Denel Munition – Murder and Mayhem in Yemen Open Secrets: Unaccountable Companies with South African links have been allowed to supply Saudi Arabia and its allies with weapons — despite the humanitarian destruction the war in Yemen has wrought.
Dube Tshidi & The FSCA – Captured Regulator? Open Secrets: Unaccountable In Part 2, we profiled the conduct of the Liberty Group in the incorrect cancellation of hundreds of pension funds when they still held more than R100m owed to thousands of people. This is part of a far bigger scandal of unpaid pensions due to more than four million southern Africans. This week we look at Dube Tshidi, a regulator who not only effected the erroneous cancellations, but also failed to hold Liberty or any implicated financial sector actors to account. When the public needed effective regulation, the Financial Services Board (FSB) and its long-standing head failed them.
Liberty – Profit Over Pensioners Open Secrets: Unaccountable More than 16 million South Africans contribute to a pension fund, most of which are run by financial behemoths like Liberty. They do so in the hope of a decent dignified life in retirement, and to ensure their dependants will be paid if they die. While the South African public is castigated for not saving enough for retirement, the pension fund industry is largely silent when it comes to the over R40bn in ‘unpaid benefits’ owed to over 4 million people. Is this because fund administrators and asset managers profit from this money?
