Publication: Sunday Independent Issued: Date: 2007-05-27 Reporter: Jeremy Gordin

Angry Chippy is Packing for Perth

 

Publication 

Sunday Independent

Date

2007-05-27

Reporter

 Jeremy Gordin

Web Link

www.sundayindependent.co.za

 

Tired of the 'lies', the youngest Shaik brother says the only thing he has done wrong is to return to South Africa

Shamin "Chippy" Shaik, the chief of acquisitions for the South African National Defence Force during the arms deal and the youngest brother in the Shaik family, is packing for Perth.

Shaik, whose brother Schabir's application for leave to appeal against his conviction and 15-year sentence for fraud and corruption was heard by the constitutional court this week, has been reported in recent months as having fled the country or gone to ground lest he be charged for soliciting a bribe from an arms supplier.

Also, he has been accused of using more than one passport - "as though I were some kind of scumbag gun-runner" - and of plagiarising parts of his doctoral dissertation at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Shaik said that he had decided to emigrate to Australia three years ago and had applied for residence and looked for a job there. But it was the re-emergence of allegations that he had been involved in an arms-deal bribe and that he had cheated in his dissertation that had made him decide to start his life again elsewhere.

"The situation in this country is toxic for me and my family," Shaik said on Friday at a coffee shop in Sandton's Mandela Square. "And it has been this way for years.

"There has been a campaign against me, obviously as a result of Schabir's troubles *1. I don't need it. I especially don't need to live in a place where my two kids, aged 14 and eight, can open up the newspaper and see me being maligned and humiliated." He took his passport out of his jacket pocket. "Here is my passport, by the way. Here is my Australian residence visa and here are my Mozambican visas. This is the only passport with which I travel…

"Why this ongoing attempt to portray me as some sort of lowlife who runs around with multiple passports?"

Shaik said his troubles began in the late 1990s when Patricia de Lille, then a member of the Pan Africanist Congress, produced her dossier which implicated him in in an arms-deal bribe. But there had been a triple-agency governmental probe, which found that the primary contracts were legitimate *2 and cleared him *3.

However, during the investigations, Shaik had given a classified document to someone not allowed to see secret documents - his attorney - and was suspended from his procurement post. He did it because he had been accused, among other things, of having had a "conflict of interest" - Schabir's company was one of the bidders for arms-deal tenders - and he wanted his attorney to see that he had no financial interest in Schabir's companies.

"But we got through that *4, and then I resigned of my own free will… I wanted to leave for my sanity… But, bang! What has happened in the media ever since then? I am said to have been suspended and fired because of the arms deal."

And then, said Shaik, the Der Spiegel report surfaced, alleging that he had asked for a R21 million bribe related to the arms deal. At first he thought it was a replay of De Lille's dossier, so didn't pay it much attention, but newspapers kept reprinting the allegation.

"And I am willing to go on record about it *5 *12. I want to say very clearly that I know fuck all, absolutely fuck all, about any bribe or any money. There is nothing else to say. I am not a policeman. I can't go and look in other people's accounts. That's for the authorities to do *6."

Regarding the charge that he cheated in his mechanical engineering doctoral dissertation, "Development of higher-order theories for the analysis of laminated composite structures under static and thermal loading", Shaik took out a schedule procured this week from the university by Yunis. It accounted for every chapter in the dissertation, explaining on which journal articles each chapter was based. Shaik was a co-author of every article *7.

"We all know where the story came from - it's from someone with an axe to grind *8. And if some newspaper decides to base a lying story *8 on what that person says, so be it. It's just part of the ongoing campaign against me and my family. Consider when the article came out - in the week that Schabir's case was going before the constitutional court.

"I am not even interested in launching a defamation case *8, which my brother wants to do, and which we could easily win *8, because, frankly, I don't care any more *9. Let the university do its investigation. There is nothing to hide. There was no cheating."

He said the only wrong thing he had ever done was to return to South Africa in the early 1990s from the United States where has was on a scholarship.

" 'Come home,' my brothers said, 'and be party to the wonderful things that are going to happen in South Africa' *10.

"And what have I got from it? Was I ever thanked for the back-breaking work that I put in at the department of defence *11? Have I ever read anything decent about myself in the media? Have my children?

"No, I'm going. That's it."

With acknowledgements to Jeremy Gordin and Sunday Independent.


*1       These are just part of the troubles - like tipping off Schabir that they were in danger of losing their exclusive corvette combat suite bid and calling in Father Jacob for top cover.

But all the trouble has been self-inflicted, especially the "get PhD at any cost" trouble.


^2      The straw-man fallacy - the JIT found that the sub-contracting process was flawed and this is where Chippy was active - in contravention his conflict of interest and so-called recusal.

But in any case the JIT report did not find all the primary contracts to be in order, indeed they found otherwise regarding the corvette contract, the very contract where the Germans have alleged he received a US$3 million bribe.


*3      The JIT Report did not cleared Chippy, it did precisely the opposite - it found against him.

This is like Goebbels-speak.


*4      But he didn't get through that - he was found guilty of both an offence related to protected information as well as insubordination and given a final warning.


*5      And I am willing to go on record about it: the German say that they have documentary proof of a request for a bribe and documentary proof of the briber paying the bribe.


*6      Indeed, and they should be doing it, doing it soon without fear or favour.


*7      Cloud-Cuckoo Land.


*8      Come on - if its lying by someone with an axe to grind these are perfect grounds for a defamation case.

And for a Big Bold MK MJK Grensvegter - name your adversary.


*9      Read "I can't fight this anymore, its spinning out of control" (just like brother Schabir under cross-examination).


*10     There were meant to be wonderful things that were going to happen in South Africa until a bunch of scoundrels got involved.


*11     Whatever back-breaking work there was at the Department of Defence was done by the Service Directors of Acquisition, Project Officers and Armscor Programme Managers dealing with the political nonsense and interference in the acquisition processes by the likes of Joe Modise and his runners like Chippy Shaik.


*12      Please excuse the repetition of the expletives regurgitated from the interviewee and printed by this family newspaper.

That's "for the record".

But the journalist used to be the editor of the local edition of Playboy (before that folded).