Special Hearings — Chemical And Biological Warfare Hearings — 1998-06-09

MR VALLY: Thank you Mr Chairperson.
 Doctor Koekemoer, I want to talk to you about TRC 62 and TRC 63.

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Yes, Mr Vally?

MR VALLY: Firstly, TRC 62, now this is the document that I've raised with you just now and you confirmed that this was for the production of what you call Mx.

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: That's correct.

MR VALLY: Now firstly, I need to know from you, in terms of the format of this document, it says at the top of the document
"Delta G Scientific Research"
It says:
"Product Research Information"

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Yes.

MR VALLY: It says
"Researcher: G J Lourens"
and he give a product code:
"FPOOMO1"

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Yes.

MR VALLY: It's a standard document which has items such as synthesis, raw materials etc.

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: That was the standard format that we used at that time.

MR VALLY: So, this would be the normal research document that you would produce, working on any chemical compound, something similar?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: This would be something that we would actually use normally for commercial products.

MR VALLY: Right.  Commercial products?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: The format that we use for commercial projects because the Production Department insisted on this sort of formal in order to enable them to evaluate the process.

MR VALLY: That's important for us.  So from TRC 62 it appears as if this wasn't a secret production taking place in one of the corners of the laboratory, this was a formal normal document which you would produce for purposes of providing it to your production people?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: That's correct, yes.

MR VALLY: So the impression one would get, because of the format of the document and how the information is laid out in TRC 62, is that it was intended to produce Mx or Mandrax?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Yes, that is correct.

MR VALLY: And if I could extrapolate from what you are saying, this was for purposes of the Production Department, then this was for purposes of commercial production?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: If you want to read it in that context, yes.  It would look as if it's a normal, it would appear that it is a normal production protocol which was valid at that time.  We changed the format at a later stage.

MR VALLY: Okay.  This is what would be handed to the Production Department, or would something else go to them if you needed to produce these items?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Well for normal commercial projects we would for example hand in a document like this to the Production Manager at that time, he would then evaluate the document and then he would come back with questions relating to any aspect which he found was either obscure to him or not feasible to carry out on a large scale.

MR VALLY: Okay.  We've already talked about possible quantities but I want to go to the very last page of 62.

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Is that page 165.

MR VALLY: That's correct.

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Yes?

MR VALLY: H3 double lined plastic bags in a sealed container.

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Yes?

MR VALLY: This seems to imply that it wasn't(?) ...[indistinct] small test quantities?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Yes, it would imply what you said now.

MR VALLY: Did you have standard size steel containers?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: No, it depended on the type of project we handled and so on because if you made Copper Hydroxide for example the method of packing this would be completely different then for say, crystalline organic compound or so.

MR VALLY: Okay.  Now, how did you distinguish between commercial products and products which were secretly for the CBW Project?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Well the commercial projects were normally handled and channelled to us via the Marketing Department whereas a CBW Project would come directly from either Doctor Basson or in most cases from Doctor Mijburgh.

MR VALLY: Other than that, were there any internal procedures which you used to distinguish between products you made for commercial purposes and products you made for CBW purposes?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: There was a computer data base which actually gave specific numbers to our CBW projects and also our projects referring to the commercial aspects and where they got these numbers from I don't know.  The 88 or something at the end, as I pointed out to that 43900688, was probably the date of origin but these were just given to us and we normally just attached it to our reports, the naming of these compounds FPO51 or whatever.

MR VALLY: What I want to take a bit further is the whole notion of whether Mandrax, Mx as you call it, was produced for commercial purposes or not?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: I have no idea.  As I said this project was honestly, as far as I'm concerned, kept under very close wraps, nobody of us knew about this aspect of the production of Mandrax.  No, I didn't know about it.

MR VALLY: Were you aware of whether Delta G Scientific or Medchem Pharmaceuticals or one of the other facilities had the production capacity to encapsulate or produce in tablet form?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: I knew that Medchem Pharmaceuticals had an encapsulating machine when they rented space at Delta G.

MR VALLY: Alright.

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: And I know that they made Chloroquine Sulphate, encapsulated Chloroquine Sulphate there.  And from my trial and tribulations with the police concerning the Ecstasy capsules that was found in my office, those were not the only capsules, there was also schedule 4 antibiotic, Ampicillin or something.  There were 56 capsules found in my possession of which about half of them were another colour and they contained I think Ampicillin.  That I was told by Captain Koch of the Forensic Department.

MR VALLY: Okay.  If you go to TRC 63.

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Yes?

MR VALLY: It says on the 1st page
"Delta G Scientific (Pty) Ltd"

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Yes.

MR VALLY: Immediately after it says
"Production"

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Yes.

MR VALLY: Now what would this imply by having a statement like that on it?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: This would imply that it is probably a document generated by the Production Department.  We did not write out our production protocol in the format that this document is presented here.

MR VALLY: So by this stage, this will be a report from the department which is mass producing the Mx regarding the processes used and the results?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: That is possible, yes.

MR VALLY: Just looking at the format of the document and the fact that it says production on the front page, would that confirm your view?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Yes, it would confirm my view.  This
format I must just say Mr Vally is rather incomplete as far as I would expect a production record to be, for the simple reason that if production did produce a record of this nature, batch numbers, batch tickets etc would be attached to it as part of the total production record so I would say this is a very incomplete production protocol from the production department.

MR VALLY: But batch numbers and batch certificates would be used as regards quality control for you to follow up any complaints?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: That is quite right, yes.

MR VALLY: And if you didn't expect to follow up you wouldn't need batch certificates and batch ... (intervention)