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'THE BALL IS IN OUR COURT'

FIGHTER JETS

Czechs and Swiss boost hope for Swedish Gripen

The interim Czech government said it plans to renew its lease of JAS Gripen fighter jets, while a parliamentary committee in Switzerland said yes to a proposed 23 billion kronor ($3.5 billion) purchase of the Swedish-made warplanes.

Czechs and Swiss boost hope for Swedish Gripen

Following two days of discussions of the deal that would see the Swiss military purchase 22 Jas Gripen jets, the security and defence committee of the Swiss parliament voted 14-9 in favour of the deal.

The deal now moves for a vote in front of the full parliament on September 11th.

The committee had previously given the deal a thumbs up in the spring, but some politicians expressed concerns, prompting the government to review and clarify the deal.

As the new Gripen E is still in development, there remains uncertainty as to whether Saab and Sweden can deliver what they’ve promised and that Switzerland may end up with what some called an “Ikea-plane” instead of a “Super-JAS”.

Meanwhile, outgoing Czech prime minister Jiri Rusnok said this week that the government expects to renew its lease on 14 Swedish fighter jets beyond 2015.

“The negotiations are at an advanced stage. The ball is actually in our court. The Swedes are awaiting our final answer to their recent offer,” he told reporters on Monday.

The new contract with Stockholm over the supersonic JAS-39 Gripen combat jets could be inked at the end of the year or in early 2014 by the new government, he added.

Snap elections are scheduled for late October.

The Czech military paid nearly $1 billion to lease the Gripens for a decade starting 2005. The aircraft include 12 one-seater JAS-39 Cs and two two-seater training JAS-39 Ds.

In July of last year, former Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas said Stockholm was being “uncooperative” regarding the renewal. According to press reports, the Swedes had been refusing to lower the lease price.

Necas stepped down in June amid a spy and bribery scandal. The president appointed a new technocratic government led by Rusnok, but that cabinet lost a confidence vote this month.

“The next government will make the final decision on the Gripens, but this (Rusnok) cabinet will do its utmost to facilitate it,” Defence Minister Vlastimil Picek said Monday. He added that the new contract will be a better deal for the Czech Republic and valid for “a period longer than ten years”.

AFP/TT/The Local/at

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CORRUPTION

Fresh bribery claims in Swedish jet scandal

Swedish defence firm Saab paid around a billion kronor to shady middlemen as part of a controversial deal to sell fighter jets to South Africa, according to documents obtained by a Swedish tabloid.

Fresh bribery claims in Swedish jet scandal
A Jas 39 Gripen jet flies above Cape Town in South Africa. Photo: AP Photo/mbr/The Star

Saab's sale of 28 Jas 39 Gripen aircraft – later reduced to 26 – to South Africa has been tainted by scandal and corruption allegations ever since it took place back in 1999.

The Swedish defence giant has always denied any wrongdoing in the deal which was mainly carried out by a subsidiary owned by Saab and British BAE and has said that no evidence of any suspect deals has turned up in its internal investigations.

But according to Sweden's Expressen newspaper, internal BAE documents handed to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), a UK-based government authority that investigates fraud and corruption, show that money was paid out to shady agents suspected of being involved in bribery.

According to the paperwork, 7.25 percent (or 13 billion kronor – $1.58 billion) of the total sales of the Gripen planes and the British Hawk aircraft was potentially handed over to secret agents. According to Expressen, the claims formed part of a UK investigation into bribery allegations linked to this cash.

Other classified documents published by the newspaper on Thursday suggest that BAE's former head of marketing for South Africa and Asia, Allan MacDonald, told SFO officers several years ago that Saab had been kept informed of all costs and the agents involved.

“I gave them more information than they had ever got before and they were informed about the arrangements with the agents on chief executive level. They knew,” the documents suggest he said.

In a statement to Expressen published on Thursday, Saab's press spokesman Sebastian Carlsson dismissed the claims that almost a billion kronor was handed to agents, but did not deny that large payouts were made.

“There's nothing strange about a person receiving compensation for the work they do. So I mean, that's not the problem, if there is a problem. The problem would in that case be what a person does,” he told the newspaper.

“If it was 7.5 or 6.5 or 4.5 or 10.5 percent [is irrelevant]. That's nothing, that's what it was like 'in the good old days'. But I can tell you that if back then you had these kinds of commission-based contracts in the export industry, the sums could sometimes be high,” he added.

Saab is one of the world's leading defence and security companies and has around 14,700 staff around the world. It is not connected to Saab Automobile.

Earlier this year it was ranked as one of the European arms companies best at tackling corruption by the Transparency International thinktank.