Bredenkamp UK home raided on corruption charges

By Violet Gonda
19 October 2006

John Bredenkamp, the wealthy business tycoon who is believed to be among those who bankroll the Mugabe regime, has found himself at the wrong end of the law again, but this time in the United Kingdom. The Guardian newspaper reports the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) raided his British home and headquarters in connection with corruption allegations against British Aerospace Engineering Systems (BAE) - Britain's biggest military exporter. Computers and files were taken away.
The paper said; “John Bredenkamp is BAE's agent in Southern Africa and is understood to have received large sums in confidential commission payments. One of the African deals the SFO is investigating is the government-backed £1.6bn sale of Hawk aircraft to South Africa in 2001.”

This news comes in the wake of a separate legal battle that is underway in Zimbabwe affecting the controversial businessman and international financier. In September the High Court granted Bredenkamp a temporary reprieve and ordered Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede to return his travel document pending the finalisation of his case. The tycoon had been acquitted in a criminal case where he was accused of flouting the country’s immigration laws. He was detained for four days for illegally using a South African passport on his international trips.
Bredenkamp, who is based in Britain and Zimbabwe, is a multi millionaire with a fortune of over £700 million.
He has over the years attracted negative publicity, mainly concerning the source of his wealth, the controversial mining and arms deals in the Democratic Republic of Congo and his alleged links to the ruling ZANU PF party.
The Serious Fraud Office told the Guardian newspaper that the raid on Bredenkamp’s properties came: "As part of an ongoing investigation into suspected corruption relating to defence contracts where BAE Systems is the prime contractor.”
The Guardian said it disclosed more than three years ago that millions of pounds in secret commission had been paid by BAE with beneficiaries including Saudi Arabian dignitaries and Chile's ex-president General Pinochet.
Bredenkamp is known as a key collaborator and business associate of many people in the ruling Zanu Pf . He was involved in many business deals and arms sales with government contracts in the DRC. The businessman, who has a long and ‘colourful’ history in Zimbabwe, was involved in sanctions busting for the Smith regime in return for a highly profitable concession to smuggle tobacco out of Rhodesia.

Like Zimbabwe at present, Rhodesia also had an arms embargo but journalist Andy Meldrum said in a previous interview that this did not deter Bredenkamp; “ When he became adept at evading international sanctions he then learnt that instead of selling tobacco you could do much better if you sold international arms.”