Sep 27 2008
MAN Ferrostaal bribe allegations revisited
On 26/8/2008 the German DAX company MAN Ferrostaal published a comprehensive denial on its website of the claim made by The Sunday Times (on 10/8/2008) that MAN Ferrostaal had paid R30 million under the table to ex-president Thabo Mbeki in exchange for an arms contract.
And repeated its request that the newspaper publish a correction of the report containing the allegations – or face legal action.
On 12/8/2008 I had reported the German media were in complete denial and speculated why the allegations against MAN Ferrostaal had not been reported in the local media.
As far as I know, MAN Ferrostaal was still waiting for a correction to be published this week and the German media have still to break their silence on the whole affair.
What a strange turn of events. Even if Germany was “tired” of hearing about claims of bribes paid by their big companies in the wake of the Siemens episode, and even if the claims of The Sunday Times were way off target, one would still expect the story to be mentioned in the German media – but not a word.
About six weeks after the claims were first made, it now seems as if MAN Ferrostaal had decided not to take legal action. I must add, it seems to me as if The Sunday Times had made a big mistake here and had done MAN Ferrostaal – and South Africa – a big disservice with the reports, its inability to admit its mistake afterwards and to apologise.
Ahh, so I was the one who made the mistake. This is especially irritating to me, since I’m the one who strongly believes in the saying “where there’s smoke, there’s ALWAYS fire”.
This time around I was a “doubting Thomas”, selecting to believe MAN Ferrostaal (and its extremely strong denials of all allegations on its website at the time) and not The Sunday Times. Bad, Volschenk, bad.