corruption in the arms trade

Show me who makes a profit from war, and I’ll show you how to stop the war.
Henry Ford, US industrialist (1863-1947)

The manufacture of and trade in weapons is a business that counts its profits in billions of dollars and its costs in human lives.

The arms trade drives the gargantuan amount spent on ‘defence’ every year – $1.6 trillion in 2010 alone: $235 for every person on the planet.

It accounts for almost 40 per cent of corruption in world trade. The very small number of people who decide on multibillion dollar contracts, the huge sums of money at stake and the veil of secrecy behind which transactions take place (in the interests of ‘national security’) ensure that the industry is hard-wired for corruption.

The formal, large government-to-government deals and illicit or black market trade are inextricably intertwined and function on the basis of collusion among politicians, intelligence operatives, listed corporations, bankers, money launderers, go-betweens and common criminals.

This shadow world of money, corruption, deceit and death operates according to its own rules, largely unscrutinized, bringing enormous benefits to a chosen few and misery to millions. The trade corrodes our democracies, weakens already fragile states and often undermines the national security it purports to strengthen.

Greased palms

I experienced this first hand as an ANC Member of Parliament in South Africa’s nascent democracy. At the time that our then President, Thabo Mbeki, claimed we did not have the resources to provide life-saving medication to the over five million people living with HIV/AIDS, we spent $10 billion on weapons we didn’t need and barely use today. About $300 million in bribes were paid to senior politicians, officials, go-betweens and the ANC itself.

To cover up this corruption the ANC leadership undermined the very institutions of democracy they had fought so courageously to bring about. Parliament was turned into a rubber stamp. I was thrown off the committee I ran and eventually forced to leave Parliament, where the ANC majority voted down any meaningful enquiry into the arms deal. The two key anti-corruption bodies were closed down, investigators told who and what they could and could not investigate, and prosecuting authorities directed as to who to charge. If you were involved in the corruption and a political danger to President Mbeki, you were charged. If, however, you were knee deep in corruption but an ally of the President, you were not even investigated.

The arms trade accounts for almost 40 per cent of corruption in all world trade

The British company BAESystems contributed $180 million of the bribes and received the biggest contract, even though the jet it sold had not made an initial shortlist and was two and a half times more expensive than the plane desired by the air force. The Defence Minister at the time, a major recipient of bribes, decided to exclude cost as a criterion on this, the single biggest contract democratic South Africa had ever signed. Only 11 of the 24 jets have ever been operational.

In the five and a half years after the deal was signed, 355,000 South Africans died avoidable deaths as a result of the government’s refusal to provide anti-retroviral drugs through the public health system. South Africa could have built close to two million houses with the money spent on the weapons or created 100,000 low-skill jobs a year for 10 years in a country with a formal unemployment rate of close to 30 per cent.

According to the country’s Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, corruption is now pervasive throughout the ruling party and at all levels of government. Its roots are to be found in the arms deal and its cover-up, the point at which the ANC lost its moral compass.