Special Hearings — Chemical And Biological Warfare Hearings — 1998-06-18

DANIEL PETER KNOBEL: If you now look at this statement here. This is a statement of expenses that he had incurred and he signs it as project officer incorrectly. He should have written down there previous project officer or whatever the case may be. But this is then submitted to the OSEO investigation as part of the information that he is now giving in terms of questions that they are also asking.
 But it is also mentioned within the CMC meeting and you will look at the CMC meeting of the 2nd of December 1994 from Appendix J you will see that under the heading: Outstanding claims at paragraph 3 there is W Basson and he explains some of the costs that he incurred in terms of his travelling fees, etc, etc which was incurred with relation to the Croatian situation and with regards to the arrest. He was arrested in Switzerland as I indicated before.
 And that was considered to be reasonable by the CMC. Here you see exactly who was on the CMC; the Chief of Staff Finance was there, the Chief of Staff Intelligence was there, the Brigadier from the financial section of the Defence Force was there and Colonel Steyn as the project officer was there. And some of these expenses were then approved there. I am saying to you - I am not necessarily saying that all the expenses that are have included in this particular letter are addressed there but I am illustrating to you that those kind of expenses were approved by the CMC.

MR VALLY: You see and on the CMC I see Brigadier Meiring, yourself.

DANIEL PETER KNOBEL: No General Meiring.

MR VALLY: I beg your pardon, General Meiring I beg your pardon; Lieutenant General Knobel that is yourself, Lieutenant General Verbeek, General Major Broker.

DANIEL PETER KNOBEL: Ja that is exactly what I have now read to you I just mentioned the posts that they occupied.

MR VALLY: Brigadier Koertzen.

DANIEL PETER KNOBEL: That is correct.

MR VALLY: And Brigadier Basson.

DANIEL PETER KNOBEL: That is correct.

MR VALLY: And Colonel Steyn.

DANIEL PETER KNOBEL: Yes.

MR VALLY: The question I have to ask you is you believe he is responsible for all these improprieties, there allegations of financial improprieties from 1991. You are worried that he abused the programme and you are convinced of this by February 1994. This is a letter dated, the one I have read to you now TRC 28 is dated 7th of May 1994. These minutes you are now referring me to are dated 2nd of December 1994 which approves the total sum of R240 000.

DANIEL PETER KNOBEL: Yes.

MR VALLY: To be given to Brigadier Basson. How seriously did you take these allegations against Brigadier Basson if you were still willing to pay him in December 1994? And this is a new document we still have to go through them. R240 000?

DANIEL PETER KNOBEL: No I am afraid there is a misunderstanding Mr Vally. Brigadier Basson's activities during that year was to finalise aspects, financial aspects around the project with regards to the Croatian issue, with regards to what had happened in Switzerland. He was arrested, he incurred some expenses in terms of his arrest. The Defence Force took responsibility for all those expenses and for his legal support, etc that was given to him. He was asked to put in front of the CMC, in fact in front of the Chief of Defence Force the expenses that he has incurred and then he was reimbursed after it was properly evaluated by the Chief of Staff Finance. And here you see specifically Brigadier Koertzen he was the man who dealt exactly with those sort of funds of the project.
 At the same time all this information had been available to the OSEO investigation and they are still conducting their investigation at this very moment. If they should find that there were expenses incurred by him which were unlawful or criminal they will certainly come out with that finding. And I will support them in that investigation.

MR VALLY: Well we will come back to that because that talks about money being given to him and TRC 28 the 7th of May 1994 letter refers to an advance given to him which he is trying to justify.

DANIEL PETER KNOBEL: No I understand what you saying but it also says that it was from CSI and I am not entirely sure whether those funds are project funds or CSI's own funds. And I think that type of information we can only get from CSI.

MR VALLY: Well let's go on. This is now May 1994 we are looking under (E). We talked about 36 000 dollars given to Dr Choo and under (i) 2500 dollars are legal costs. Under (ii) you say the pre-active closing. I assume that is for pro-active?

DANIEL PETER KNOBEL: Yes that is correct.

MR VALLY: Closing of accounts and cancellation of "bewaar kluise." Did you have safety deposit boxes?

DANIEL PETER KNOBEL: I beg your pardon?

MR VALLY: What is "bewaar kluise" referred to here? I am looking at (ii) (E). TRC 28

DANIEL PETER KNOBEL: Yes, no I am looking at that.

MR VALLY: Well let me read the whole sentence and you can explain to us what it was
"The pro-active closing of accounts and cancellation of safes which could associate him with the project officer in case of investigations by the Swiss police. At this stage he was unsure of what the police were investigating or what they had investigated and which compromising documentation they had received from the project officer."
Do you have any knowledge of this?

DANIEL PETER KNOBEL: No certainly at the time we were informed. I was informed to my satisfaction and I was also assisted in this regard by CSF as I have always been in all the financial transactions of the project. And as I have said to you already we had taken it to the CMC for their final approval.

MR VALLY: We are talking about the details of what actually they were hiding from the Swiss police.

DANIEL PETER KNOBEL: No if you saying was I informed about the detail. Not more than what you see in front of you here. But quite frankly we need Dr Basson to explain to us exactly what he means by (...indistinct)

MR VALLY: So you didn't know?

DANIEL PETER KNOBEL: No Sir.

YASMINE SOOKA: ...(inaudible) ask what they were?

DANIEL PETER KNOBEL: Oh yes Ms Sooka please you must understand the project officer had a free hand into how he established accounts in Europe within a broad guideline which had been approved by the Minister and which had been approved by the co-ordinating management committee. What he did on the ground to hide the fact that the client behind these transactions was in fact the South African Defence Force was to shift accounts around into various other accounts and so on to make it untraceable back to the Defence Force. These are the type of transactions that he carried out there. This is the subject of the OSEO investigation. And that is why I said at the beginning we must allow that investigation to unravel this and then ultimately explain to us what exactly he did. I am concerned about this like you are but at that time I had the backing of the co-ordinating management committee. I had on that committee co-opted Brigadier Koertzen who was the officer at the Chief of Staff Finance's offices who looked after the transactions of the project. When the OSEO investigation started I immediately asked Brigadier Koertzen to be totally involved in the investigation and to give them explanations and answers to every question that they ask here. What is more the financial officer of the project which was a man called Twita who has all the documents that are contained in the 14 trunks, all of that has been made available to the Office of Serious Economic Offences and they have been working on unravelling that now for 5 years and they are not yet in a position to come up with final charges. I have great difficulty in saying more than what I have just said to you now. The record is here I don't deny it. It is correct. I dealt with it by taking it to the CMC. The CMC approved the payment of the expenses.

MR VALLY: Mr Vally.