This week Open Secrets publishes the second in a series of profiles on the corporations and middlemen implicated in the multibillion-dollar Arms Deal of the late 1990s. This week we focus on the company at the heart of Zuma’s Arms Deal corruption scandal and the co-accused in their corruption trial, the South African subsidiary of…
This week Open Secrets publishes the first of a number of profiles on the corporations and middlemen implicated in the multibillion-dollar Arms Deal of the late 1990s. None of these companies has been held to account. The arms in the infamous Arms Deal were bought when South Africa faced a different viral health crisis for…
Big consulting firms take no credit and they accept no blame. This philosophy has enabled McKinsey & Company to profit with ease from work with authoritarian regimes, troubled businesses and corrupt state-owned enterprises. In South Africa, their work at Eskom and Transnet on some of the most infamous State Capture contracts reveals a story of…
The infamous Estina Vrede Dairy Project was supposed to direct public funds to ‘empower’ indigent Free State farmers and develop local agriculture. Instead, almost all of the money was looted to benefit the Gupta enterprise. This week Open Secrets focuses on two of the banks that facilitated this injustice. As shown in The Enablers Investigative…
If Transnet was a golden goose for the Gupta family and their associates, then global banking giant HSBC played the role of tending their illicit nest eggs. This week Open Secrets examines the role of a key global enabler in the State Capture network. As shown in The Enablers investigative report, it takes more than…
Who laundered money for the Gupta acolytes and used the opportunity to cash in on State Capture? A new investigative report, ‘The Enablers’, co-authored by Open Secrets and Shadow World Investigations, details the role of bankers, accountants, consultants and lawyers in State Capture. Submitted to the Zondo commission, the report details case studies which are…
South Africa’s arms trade regulator has failed in its mandate to monitor the export of weapons to countries that, among other things, abuse human rights, or wage war against their own citizens. This begs the question, who will guard the guards themselves? Apartheid South Africa was steeped in secretive arms deals with clandestine transactions propping…
Companies with South African links have been allowed to supply Saudi Arabia and its allies with weapons — despite the humanitarian destruction the war in Yemen has wrought. Yemen is at the epicentre of a regionalised civil war. Over the past five years, thousands of combatants have been killed and United Nations (UN) reports show…
More than 16 million South Africans contribute to a pension fund, most of which are run by financial behemoths like Liberty. They do so in the hope of a decent dignified life in retirement, and to ensure their dependants will be paid if they die. While the South African public is castigated for not saving…
Open Secrets | Daily Maverick | 20 November 2019 Margaret Hodge has clothed herself in the claim that she has dedicated her life to fighting racism – that her very ‘being’ was anti-racist, as she said in March 2019. The facts suggest otherwise. Open Secrets is a non-profit organisation which exposes and builds accountability for…
