Significant win for NPA in Zuma/Thales battle

French arms company Thales, accused of bribing former President Jacob Zuma in the multi-billion-rand arms deal in the 1990s, has lost its bid to have racketeering charges withdrawn, notes Legalbrief. A full Bench of the KZN High Court (Pietermaritzburg) – Judges Alsa Bezuidenhout, Mahendra Chetty and Anton van Zyl – found on Friday that there was ‘reasonable and probable cause to believe’ that Thales had participated in a ‘pattern of racketeering’ with Zuma’s former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik. It dismissed the application with costs. It is a significant victory for the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in its efforts to finalise the long-awaited corruption trial of Zuma and Thales, opines legal writer Karyn Maughan in a News24 report. The decision means that the state can pursue its case that Thales knew Shaik had made 783 payments to Zuma over a 10-year period between 1995 and 2005. The NPA contends that the purpose of these payments was to assist Shaik to use Zuma’s ‘political connectivity’ to benefit Shaik – who the NPA alleges also facilitated a R500 000 a year bribe for Zuma from Thales, in exchange for his ‘political protection’ from any potential investigation of the multibillion rand Arms Deal. The NPA argues that, because Thales ‘knew’ about these payments, it acted ‘in common purpose’ with Shaik and Zuma to share in the benefits of Shaik’s political connectivity. This alleged knowledge is, therefore, pivotal to proving that Thales was knowingly and actively participating in a criminal enterprise and therefore is guilty of racketeering – a crime that carries a possible 25-year sentence.

But the arms company effectively blocked the state from proceeding with the Zuma/Thales trial for months by challenging the legality of the NPA’s decision to charge it with racketeering, notes the News24 report. Thales maintained that it did not know that Shaik had allegedly made over 783 payments to Zuma in order to keep him on a corrupt ‘retainer’. In other words, Thales argued, there was no evidence that it knowingly associated itself with that allegedly corrupt relationship and could not be said to have formed part of an organised criminal enterprise. Bezuidenhout rejected that argument. ‘In the final analysis, it is clear in my view that sufficient information was placed before the National Directors of Public Prosecution on which they could rationally conclude that there was reasonable and probable cause to believe that Thales South Africa had, directly or indirectly or with common purpose, participated in the enterprise run by Mr Shaik, through a pattern of racketeering activity.’ The NPA has itself previously acknowledged that Thales’ awareness of Shaik’s payments to Zuma. This ‘... remains one of (the) weakest aspects of the case as it relies predominantly on inferences rather than direct evidence’. Thales representative Pierre Moynot testified during the Shaik trial that the company was not aware of payments made by Shaik to Zuma, ‘... and the contrary was never shown or found by the court’. The latest ruling will therefore give a significant confidence boost to the state, which was forced to disclose much of its Zuma prosecution strategy, in order to convince the High Court not to invalidate its decision to pursue the Thales racketeering prosecution.