Dealmaker and Gallic charmer
ARMS dealer Ivor Ichikowitz, regarded as being close to several ANC heavyweights, including President Jacob Zuma, is poised to buy an ailing hi-tech weapons manufacturer in a deal that would make him the most influential supplier of combat and peacekeeping hardware on the continent.
The Sunday Times has established that Ichikowitz — who was linked to entities investigated for arms control violations and attempted bribery — will bail out Advanced Technologies & Engineering (ATE).
But Ichikowitz, in an interview with the Sunday Times, rejected the label of “lord of war”, saying he was in the business of “protecting democracies”.
“There are those who play the ‘ lord of war’ game, but one of the reasons I’m in this business is to push those people out,” he said.
The role of his company, Paramount, was to bring peace and security to Africa, he said.
“We choose who we do business with very carefully. I’m doing this because I want to make a difference.”
He said Paramount had never broken any arms control laws or sold weapons to dictators.
ATE, which designed hi-tech weapons and navigation systems for the Rooivalk attack helicopter and the Hawk fighter trainer jet, faced being liquidated by creditors, including Eurocopter and Investec bank, for debts of some R300-million. The bailout of ATE, details of which are being kept under wraps, will give Ichikowitz ’ s company unprecedented access to some of the most advanced weaponry in the world.
The bailout could revive ATE deals worth billions to upgrade Russian and Chinese jets and helicopters with Western laser guided-missile and night-vision pany cannot be allowed to fail.”
The deal will bring together companies belonging to two of the most controversial figures in the South African arms industry.
Pizano, a French engineer who worked at the Mirage fighter jet manufacturer Dassault, set up ATE in Pretoria in the mid-1980s, raising suspicions that he had helped the apartheid government circumvent sanctions.
He was later accused of introducing Schabir Shaik to key players in the French arms industry and helping him to set up the Nkobi group of companies, an alleged front of the ANC.
He won a court battle last year when he rejected a plan proposed by a business rescue practitioner, Karl Gribnitz. But in court papers Gribnitz accused him of running the company as a “Ponzi scheme” by using money advanced for certain projects to pay unrelated costs, including those of his lavish lifestyle.
He said allegations that he had looted his company were “ab- solutely not true” and that ATE’s financial crises stemmed from major contracts falling through.
According to court papers, these included a R5-billion deal to equip cheap Chinese jet fighters made in Pakistan with French missiles, and a R2-billion deal to upgrade 40 Russian transport and attack helicopters with Rooivalkstyle guided missiles and cannons.
Pizano denied involvement in apartheid sanctions-busting or arms-deal corruption. He had been to Malaysia with Shaik several times to “explore business opportunities in the field of avionics integration, [but] did not entertain any other dealings with Shaik”.
Ichikowitz attracted the most controversy for reportedly partnering with Sandi Majali’s company, Imvume, an alleged ANC front company, when it was involved in the oil-for-food programme with Iraq.
Majali was later found to have paid bribes for oil allocations from Iraq. Imvume was found to have diverted an R11-million payment from the state oil company, PetroSA, to the ANC to fund the 2004 elections.
Meanwhile, two Ichikowitz companies, The Virlean Initiative (TVI) and Mechanology Design Bureau (MDB), were accused in a 2005 investigation commissioned by the Defence Department of entering army bases and stripping armoured vehicles without authorisation and violating arms control rules in exports to several countries, including Angola and Ghana.
In one incident, an MDB official dropped off “a gift comprising a weekend breakaway and cash, amount unknown, to my private abode ”, according to a sworn statement by an army colonel.
The report, by First Consulting, recommended that TVI’s and MDB’s offices be raided and that Paramount be investigated. But no further action was taken after a parallel investigation commissioned by Armscor apparently cleared all parties.
Armscor failed to supply the Sunday Times with the report by forensic accountants Gobodo, despite repeated requests.
Ichikowitz companies were also cited in a 2007 business proposal, seen by the Sunday Times, for a mining venture in the war- torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo with the Makabuza family, whose members have been accused of illegal arms trading and funding a rebel group charged with war crimes.
Ichikowitz dismissed this as a “desperate attempt to dig up dirt to smear my good name”.
The First Consulting investigation was prompted by squabbles between the Defence Department and the Armscor board, he said. The allegations against Mechanology “were investigated and found to have no substance”.
The Congo proposal was made independently by his mining team. “After the team had done a due diligence, it was decided not to proceed, and to end all involvement with the DRC.”
He said that there was nothing untoward about being a “vocal supporter” and funder of the ANC. “But this was never conditional. Majali was part of the fundraising structures for the ANC and I was helping out. I never hid it.” TWO contrasting portraits of the flamboyant 59-year-old French arms dealer Jean-Marc Pizano emerge, depending on who you talk to.
Detractors describe a man who used guile, charm and dash to cosy up to arms-deal kingpins and clinch lucrative deals. “He always seemed to be too close to people with power,” said one arms manufacturer. “It left me feeling uneasy.”
Others described how he used his relationships with defence departments to clinch deals.
His flashy lifestyle — a £6-million (R84-million) property in London, immaculate attire and constant jetting around the world — prompted accusations that he was looting his own company when it faced liquidation for failing to pay creditors.
But arms industry sources sympathetic to Pizano insist that he was merely “overoptimistic ”, like a salesman who sincerely believed he was always about to clinch the next major deal.
“The man has decades of marketing experience in this field and an invaluable network of contacts,” said one. “He always did what was best for the company, [which] never paid a dividend because every cent of profit was ploughed back into the company.”
Another conceded that he could come across as arrogant but put this down to his “French flair”.
Pizano was among a group of French engineers working for Dassault — maker of the Mirage fighter jet — who moved to South Africa in 1984 to set up aerospace company Advanced Technologies & Engineering (ATE). They had apparently spotted a potential business opportunity because South Africa’s ageing Mirage fleet needed an upgrade that Dassault could not carry out because of the arms embargo. ATE never won the contract because the air force launched its own secret upgrade programme, but the company was contracted to work on several prestige projects, including the Rooivalk helicopter.
After 1994, Pizano positioned himself to benefit from the notorious arms deal, travelling to Malaysia several times with Schabir Shaik. He later obtained a lucrative deal for work on the Hawk fighter trainer jet for BAE.
The company’s South African agent, Richard Charter, who was paid more than £26-million (R384-million) in arms-deal commissions and later drowned in a canoe accident, became ATE ’ s non-executive chairman.
Pizano rejects the perception that he “bled the company dry”.
His properties were funded by selling 20% of ATE’s shares to BAE in 1996 and he later sold the properties to keep the company afloat, he said.
He regards himself simply as “an industrialist [who] had to market ATE” to get the best possible deals.
“We succeeded with the Hawk programme as we were the only company capable to do the job,” he said.