Saab in secret million agreement with shady company
29 maj 2017 kl 20.50
Saab signed a secret deal with the main suspect of an ongoing case in South Africa.
Saab paid 270,000 euros - more than 2.6 million kronor - to a South African consulting company, "TV4 News" and "Cold Facts" revealed.
"I've never handled the matters you're talking about," said Kjell Möller, Saab's former vice president, who signed the agreement.
When Saab sold the Jas Gripen plan to South Africa, payments of 24 million SEK were made to South Africa's Defense Minister's Special Adviser, Fana Hlongwane. It was 2011 and Saab was accused of paying bribes.
Saab denied the allegations and began their own investigation of bribery. The result: Saab was misled by British partner BAE, Saab claimed.
In 2015, Expressen revealed Jas Gripen documents which showed that Saab paid one billion kronor to controversial intermediaries, known from scandals.
18,000 euros a month
And now new information is displayed. The "TV4 News" and "Cold Facts" revealed another secret agreement that was written directly between the consultant Hlongwane Consulting in South Africa and Saab in Linköping. The consulting company is owned, as the name suggests, by Fana Hlongwane.
The agreement, dated October 1, 2003, as now revealed, states that Saab undertook to pay 18,000 euros - 175,000 SEK in today's monetary value - in the month to the consulting company until 31st December 2004. In total, it would be 270,000 euros, equivalent to Over 2.6 million kronor in today's monetary value.
Saab's former deputy CEO, Kjell Möller, has signed the agreement, which has been kept secretly.
"The company and the consultant will treat this agreement with highest confidence and shall not disclose either its existence or content to any third party without a mutual written agreement", according to the "TV4 News" and "Cold Facts" agreement.
Fana Hlongwane is identified as suspected in the corruption case around Jas in two different police investigations: one in Britain and one in South Africa.
In total, suspected bribes of 1.3 billion have been paid in accordance with the criminal investigations, TV4 states.
Former Saab top Kjell Möller tells TV4 that he does not remember the deal, but at the same time says that there have been no bribes:
"I've never handled the matters you're talking about," he told TV4's reporter