{"id":12315,"date":"2012-05-12T22:03:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-12T20:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=12315"},"modified":"2012-05-14T11:11:24","modified_gmt":"2012-05-14T09:11:24","slug":"e-toll-company-denies-arms-deal-involvement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/12315\/e-toll-company-denies-arms-deal-involvement\/","title":{"rendered":"E-toll company denies arms deal involvement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kapsch TrafficCom<\/a>, the Austrian company contracted to the e-toll system, has denied that it had improper dealings with Swedish companies involved in the arms deal.<\/p>\n

The company’s executive board member Andre Laux denied that it had improper dealings with arms manufacturing company, SAAB<\/a> — which admitted in June to paying bribes of more than R24 million to ensure it was picked to supply Gripen jets to South Africa in the arms deal.<\/p>\n

“We firmly reject any speculation linking Kapsch TrafficCom and the arms deals. We believe this allegation is the result of a simple misinterpretation of information regarding one of our subsidiary companies,” he said in a statement on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Kapsch said it had bought Swedish Combitech, a daughter company of SAAB, in 2000. The company was a specialist in e-tolling and traffic solutions, and offered “a perfect match to Kapsch’s traffic business-line”.<\/p>\n

“This is the only link between our Swedish subsidiary and the project in South Africa,” said Laux.<\/p>\n

The company welcomed the announcement of a preliminary investigation into the e-toll contracts by Public Protector Thuli Madonsela<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The investigation was announced on Friday after complaints were lodged by Democratic Alliance<\/a> MP Jack Bloom, director for the Institute for Accountability in SA Paul Hoffman and the recently resigned chief executive of the SA National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral)<\/a> Nazir Alli<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bloom said the country needed “to know if any high-level politician was unjustly enriched in this process.”<\/p>\n

Alli resigned on Monday, just over a week after the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (Outa)<\/a> was granted an urgent interdict to stop the launch of the system.<\/p>\n

The project has since been put on hold.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

SANRAL\u2019s E-tag refunds total R25 million<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

SANRAL appoints Koos Smit as CEO<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Busa welcomes e-toll task force<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Saab AB denies any link to e-tolling project<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kapsch TrafficCom has denied that it had improper dealings with Swedish companies involved in the arms deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":11030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[2784,26,2775,2644,1967],"class_list":["post-12315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-andre-laux","tag-headline","tag-kapsch-trafficcom","tag-saab","tag-thuli-madonsela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12315"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12319,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12315\/revisions\/12319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}