SOUTH AFRICAN President Jacob Zuma announced yesterday that an inquiry he commissioned into a 1999 multibillion-rand arms deal had revealed no fraud.

Britain’s BAE Systems, Sweden’s Saab, Germany’s Thyssen Krupp and France’s Thales and Thomson-CSF were all accused of offering bribes to secure lucrative contracts to supply warships, tanks, jet fighters and helicopters to the South African military.

Mr Zuma was sacked as vice-president in 2005 after his associate Schabir Shaik was convicted of corruption and fraud with respect to the deal and his relationship with Mr Zuma.

The African National Congress welcomed Mr Zuma’s release of Judge Willie Seriti’s findings yesterday from the four-year inquiry, which ended last year.

It found that there was no evidence of improper influence in the bidding process.

Former Nedbank executive, journalist and Economists for Peace and Security chairman Terry Crawford-Browne brought the case through the Constitutional Court in 2010.

Mr Zuma was first implicated in 2005 when his friend and financial supporter Mr Shaik was convicted of two counts of corruption — of paying Mr Zuma in furtherance of a corrupt relationship and of soliciting a bribe for Zuma from Thomson-CSF — and of fraudulently writing off loans at the Nkobi Group.

Then-president Thabo Mbeki forced Mr Zuma — who as KwaZulu-Natal provincial premier until 1999 had no role in negotiating the arms deal — to resign that year.