Former Mp Claims Mbeki Killed Bae Bribery Inquiry

President Thabo Mbeki was involved in the ruling African National Congress leadership's blocking of a parliamentary investigation into alleged bribery by BAE Systems and other weapons firms in the country's biggest ever arms deal, according to a former MP who was driven out of the ANC for spearheading the inquiry.

Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC member of the parliament's public accounts committee, said the presidency killed off its investigation, pressured the auditor general to change a report criticizing the £1.5bn deal to buy planes from BAE as "flawed", and stymied an inquiry by the director of public prosecutions into whether the ruling party accepted bribes to fund its election campaigns. Mbeki has denied blocking the investigations but has characterized them as attempts to bring down his government.

In a new book, After the Party, Feinstein, a Cambridge-trained economist, reveals the extent to which Mbeki was involved in stopping the 2001 investigation.

Feinstein has since moved to London and is cooperating with an inquiry by Britain's Serious Fraud Office into £75m in payments made to the former defense minister, Joe Modise, senior officials in his office and others in South Africa at the time BAE won a contract to supply planes at nearly twice the price of a rival bidder.

Feinstein said investigators uncovered evidence that Modise received at least 10m rand (£713,000) in bribes from BAE and a German weapons firm, but there was paperwork to suggest that up to R35m (£2.5m) in illegal payments had been made to the former defence minister who has since died. "Other key government players in the deal are alleged to have received millions in bribes. In addition, speculation has refused to go away that the ANC received millions of rands from the successful bidders, money that was probably used in our 1999 election campaign," he writes.

Feinstein said his committee's investigation initially had support from powerful ANC figures, but that fell away as the presidency grew concerned to the point of "apoplexy". The first pressure to curb the inquiry came from the ANC's chief whip, Tony Yengeni, who became "intimidating". ANC members of the committee were called before party leaders including Essop Pahad, a minister, who "launched into a ferocious diatribe". "Who the fuck do you think you are, questioning the integrity of the government, ministers and the president?" he said.

Yengeni sacked Feinstein and told other members that "the ANC, from the president downwards, will now exercise political control". Yengeni was later convicted of accepting bribes from a German arms manufacturer, after the press exposed the dealings, and was jailed for four years. He was freed after just four months.

The final public accounts committee report said there was no evidence of irregularities.