Arms Deal: 'Commission a waste of tax-payer’s money'
Patricia de Lille, who led the initial calls for an investigation into the controversial arms deal, says she's not at all surprised by the findings of the Seriti Commission.
After a four year-long probe and millions of rand spent, President Jacob Zuma announced today that the commission found there was no evidence of bribery or corruption in the arms procurement process.
The inquiry investigated fraud and corruption allegations in the R70 billion deal.
De Lille says the commission was a big waste of tax-payer’s money.
"The outcome was decided long before the commission started. The judge only had to design a process to get a predetermined outcome to give President Zuma what he wanted. Once again, these findings were designed to protect one man - President Jacob Zuma," she said.
The arms deal's biggest critic, Terry Crawford-Browne has described the report as a 'whitewash'. Crawford-Browne believes not all the evidence was addressed by the commission.
"All the evidence has been deliberately left in two shipping containers in Pretoria - evidence that they could not supposedly find. I'm afraid the issue has not been resolved. It has only compounded the problem.
"The arms deal has unleashed the culture of corruption that we face - the Gupta-gate scandal etc. We are now facing the prospects of being downgraded to junk status," he said.
He says this is far from over.
"I would like to go back to the Constitutional Court and get varying legal advice on that and whether we have reached the end of the road as far as South Africa is concerned," he said.
(File photo: Gallo Images)