South African firms suspect UAE companies may have obtained military intellectual property:
Defence company Paramount Group has provided information to the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), which is investigating claims that companies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) unlawfully obtained intellectual property developed by South Africa’s arms industry.
The investigation focuses on employees of at least two defence firms who are suspected of passing military intellectual property (IP) to UAE state-owned companies.
“Paramount Group is cooperating fully with the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) in its investigation into wrongdoing by UAE government-controlled entities, particularly as it relates to the unlawful targeting of South African defence intellectual property,” Lynn Lauth, a lawyer for Paramount, told the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a global network of investigative journalists.
The OCCRP obtained two briefings from the SIU, which focus mainly on allegations that employees of a second company, Denel SOC Ltd, “misappropriated” the research and design that underlines arms production.
One of the documents obtained by the OCCRP was a 2023 presentation to parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), while the other was a PowerPoint briefing of the SIU’s findings in 2025.
The SIU declined to answer detailed questions about its investigation, saying that it “reports only to the president and parliament”.
“Therefore, we cannot make public statements or give comments on ongoing investigations,” a spokesperson added in an email. “However, it is important to note that evidence indicating criminal conduct has been referred to the National Prosecuting Authority.”
Paramount has also launched its own internal investigation to determine whether employees provided intellectual property to a UAE company after a joint venture deal that eventually collapsed.
‘Pattern of misconduct’
Founded in South Africa in the early 1990s, Paramount is now headquartered in the UAE. The company filed for bankruptcy last year after losing an arbitration case in London against Abu Dhabi Autonomous Systems Investments Company (Adasi).
Paramount’s problems began in 2016 when one of its subsidiaries, Riverston Enterprises Limited, entered into a joint venture deal with Adasi.
The joint venture fell apart after Adasi was taken over by another UAE state-owned firm called Edge Group, according to internal records and court documents obtained by the OCCRP.
As part of the agreement to set up the joint venture, Adasi had provided Paramount with a loan of $ 150??million, an internal document from Edge shows. That money was meant to cover the costs of creating the joint venture company in the UAE, and transferring the intellectual property behind Paramount’s reconnaissance plane, which the new company would transform into an armed strike aircraft called the MWARI.
Both Adasi and Paramount agree that the intellectual property was never transferred to the UAE as planned. Now Paramount says it is no longer legally obligated to transfer the intellectual property, but Adasi says it has the rights to the information under the arbitration ruling.
Neither the Edge Group, which owns Adasi, nor its public relations representatives responded to requests for comment. But a legal document filed by Adasi in Paramount’s bankruptcy case provides insight into its position.
In the legal filing, Adasi argued that Paramount’s bankruptcy case was a stall tactic meant to give the company time to move its assets so they could not be transferred. Those included the “potentially valuable intellectual property assets”, which had been “granted to Adasi”.
The filing states that Paramount said it declared bankruptcy because it could not afford to pay the penalty ordered by the arbitration board. That penalty totalled $ 230??million, and included the $ 150??million that was to cover the transfer of intellectual property for its aircraft to the UAE.
Paramount’s South African lawyer, Lauth, told the OCCRP that the intellectual property of the MWARI aircraft “remains wholly governed by South African law and has not been externalised to the UAE, Adasi, EDGE or any related entity”.
Intellectual property used exclusively for military purposes is often not patented, because doing so would make the designs accessible to competitors and hostile actors. Instead, such property is considered a “sovereign asset” overseen by the government, according to experts including Vanessa du Toit who previously ran the National Conventional Arms Control Committee, which oversees South Africa’s military technology and arms exports.
Lauth said the research and design behind the MWARI was “not the only intellectual property that was allegedly targeted”.
“Our clients have identified a broader pattern of misconduct involving multiple Paramount-developed platforms,” she told the OCCRP.
In a leaked document from the arbitration case, Paramount founder Ivor Ichikowitz said the deal was based on Adasi ordering 5??000 armoured vehicles, and 6??000 “loitering munitions”, which are drones built to explode on impact. In the end, only four trucks and 500 drones were ordered by the company.
“In hindsight, it now appears that the presentations and solutions we presented may have been used by … staff to benchmark other defence projects underway at the time in other organisations in the UAE,” Ichikowitz said, according to a leaked affidavit from the arbitration case.
Ichikowitz declined to provide comment to reporters.
Martie Baumgardt, a senior executive, told the OCCRP the firm is also carrying out its own internal investigation. She said the company is looking into the “possible theft of IP from Paramount by individuals who left the company, which may conceivably have ended up in the UAE”.
According to Baumgardt, after the joint venture with the UAE partner broke down, 45 Paramount employees joined Edge Group companies.
A leaked document from Paramount’s internal investigation also alleges that 57 laptops and 10 hard drives were stolen from 2016 — the year Paramount’s subsidiary entered the joint venture with Adasi — to 2024, when it lost the arbitration case.
The Denel affair
Meanwhile, the Denel case dates back to 2012, when South Africa’s state-owned arms manufacturer entered into a joint venture with a UAE firm, then known as Tawazun Operation Company LLC. Under the agreement, the two firms established a new company based in the UAE called Tawazun Dynamics LLC.
According to the 2023 briefing to Scopa, the joint venture was initially intended to manufacture and supply Denel missiles to the UAE Air Force, and “future customers”.
At first, the partnership appeared to be a success. Other deals were soon struck, in which Denel would also provide a UAE defence company called NIMR Automotive LLC with RG35 Military Vehicle IP and hardware.
But the relationship began to sour.
“It is alleged that the IP belonging to the institution was misappropriated in cohesive criminal conduct to abet foreign state companies,” the SIU said in its 2023 briefing, referring to allegations brought by Denel.
In its investigation, the SIU found evidence suggesting that Denel employees may have accessed intellectual property without permission.
In one instance, SIU investigators found that “data packs” relating to missile technology had been downloaded from Denel’s system after a request from Halcon, another arms company owned by Edge Group, according to the 2023 briefing.
That briefing also outlines a case reported by Denel to the SIU, which involved intellectual property for a military vehicle. The SIU noted that contracts had been signed with NIMR by a Denel employee who was not authorised to do so.
“This official later resigned and informed Denel that he was offered a senior position by NIMR,” the briefing says.
Denel reported that it had later received a letter from the chief executive of NIMR, who had previously worked for Denel, demanding intellectual property for a military vehicle.
The joint venture company Tawazun Dynamics is today called Al Tariq and — like NIMR — it is owned by Edge Group, which did not respond to questions about alleged attempts to transfer intellectual property from Denel.
The NIMR chief executive was one of more than 300 Denel staff who left the company and went to work in the UAE’s arms sector, according to a summary of a South African parliamentary discussion in February.
Gloria Serobe, chair of the Denel board, told the parliamentary committee that so many Denel employees had left for UAE firms that “board meetings were done in Afrikaans”.
This story was first published by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
Conventional and complementary healthcare professionals need to work together:
Earlier this year, the US government took the drastic decision to terminate about 40 USAid-funded health projects in South Africa, a move that threatens the sustainability of these projects. The halting of funding has led to the closure of many clinics and a decrease in services rendered, such as HIV testing and treatment.
To mitigate the problem, the health department, together with the South African National Aids Council, the Joint UN programme on HIV/Aids and World Health Organisation, has launched the Close the Gap campaign, which aims to put 1.1 million individuals living with HIV on treatment by December 2025.
But this intervention leaves a gap of more than 2 million people who are lost to treatment for different reasons. According to the health department, nearly 8 million people are living with HIV in South Africa, with 5.7 million people stable on antiretroviral drugs (ARVs).
Among the reasons for the lost numbers could be the use of complementary medicine, instead of the conventional medicine offered in the mainstream healthcare system. Despite South Africa having diverse communities with multifaceted healthcare needs, who seek assistance from both conventional and complementary medicine practitioners, research shows that access to complementary medicine remains largely unsupported. According to the WHO, 80% of the world’s population uses it.
Complementary medicine includes treatments such as homeopathy, Unani-Tibb, ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, aromatherapy and Western herbal medicine. South African studies have highlighted the high use of complementary medicine, especially Western and traditional herbal medicine, among people living with HIV.
Additionally, these studies have shown that people living with HIV use complementary and ARVs concurrently without the knowledge of their healthcare providers. This is a huge risk as it can compromise the safety and effectiveness of ARVs and cause herb-drug interactions. This is exacerbated by the lack of inter-professional communication between conventional and complementary healthcare practitioners.
Professional inter-referral is a practice of healthcare practitioners referring patients to other practitioners to ensure complete, safe and high-quality patient-centred care. This practice is a requisite to improve patient outcomes and enhance the efficiency of healthcare delivery.
Despite the increasing evidence and popularity of complementary medicine use in South Africa, there is no formal inter-referral system between conventional and complementary healthcare professionals. Studies show that conventional healthcare practitioners do not refer patients to complementary practitioners, even though they receive referrals from them. For instance, complementary medicine practitioners refer patients to hospitals for laboratory blood tests and X-rays, as well as to various specialists.
This finding is concerning and needs to be highlighted to improve the management of multidisciplinary care and continuity of patient care.
Furthermore, evidence shows that the lack of an inter-referral system between conventional and complementary practitioners can lead to the fragmentation and compromise of the delivery of quality healthcare. This suggests that inter-referral relationship is a significant practice needed for comprehensive patient care, especially in South Africa, where diverse people use different modalities for healthcare.
It demands that healthcare practitioners realise that their area of expertise is important — but not sufficient alone. This is not easy for some to accept and warrants highlighting. Inter-referral relationships require practitioners to step outside their professional pride to appreciate others.
A 2025 South African study showed that conventional healthcare practitioners were willing to suggest that patients seek advice from complementary practitioners, yet they were unable to make a formal referral themselves.
One can assume that conventional practitioners might have a perception that practising complementary medicine is not a legitimate profession. Their insufficient knowledge of complementary medicine could also be a reason for not referring patients.
In South Africa, complementary medicine is regulated by the Allied Health Professions Council of South Africa. The licensing and registration requirements are regulated by the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority. These bodies prioritise the quality and efficacy of medicines and patient safety.
Complementary healthcare practitioners are clinically trained as diagnosticians in higher institutions across South Africa. For instance, the Department of Complementary Medicine at the University of Johannesburg offers a postgraduate diploma in phytotherapy (medicinal plant-based therapy) to medical doctors to increase their scope of practice, enhance the cross-disciplinary approach and help them provide a holistic treatment for patients.
The dominance of evidence-based medicine is identified as the main barrier to the inter-referral system. There is increasing documented scientific and clinical evidence on complementary medicines and safety data on the toxicology and possible herb-drug interactions.
This evidence is sufficient to convince conventional healthcare practitioners to refer patients to complementary practitioners. A formalised referral system is significant to strengthening the healthcare system, especially within the integrated National Health Insurance that is to be implemented in South Africa. The lack of a formalised inter-referral system has implications for patient safety in the delivery of healthcare.
The delivery of healthcare in South Africa needs to be considered alongside the broader cultural and social contexts, which necessitate a collaborative approach. South African healthcare must offer a holistic patient-centered approach that considers patients’ preferences and includes them in the treatment plan. This will ensure that patients receive appropriate service according to their needs.
Dr Tebogo Tsele-Tebakang is head of the Department of Complementary Medicine, in the Faculty of Health Sciences, at the University of Johannesburg. She writes in her personal capacity.
There are new killers on the loose:
There it was in stark black and white, the sad news that legendary Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado had died at the age of 81 in Paris. It is terrible news but the great man lived a full life travelling to the remotest corners of the world to document the lives of people, the environment and the relationship between the two.
Sometimes brutal but always beautiful, his images of human suffering led some to call him the “aesthete of misery”. Probably his most well-known image is the one of hundreds of workers at the Serra Pelada gold mine in Brazil swarming up crude wooden ladders weighed down by heavy containers.
But there are thousands of other equally unforgettable images — always black and white and often with the contrasts of light accentuated — from Salgado’s trips to the wildest areas on Earth, from the Amazon to the Arctic.
In the documentary The Salt of the Earth, co-produced by German director Wim Wenders and Salgado’s son Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, the acclaimed photographer, a man after my own heart, says: “We humans are terrible animals.”
Something that I didn’t know about Salgado is that after experiencing the horrors of the Rwandan genocide, in 1998 he put aside his cameras and founded the Instituto Terra. In a grand reforesting project he planted hundreds of thousands of trees in the Rio Doce valley in Brazil.
Amid the relentless barrage of stories about the forests being chopped down, or cleared to make room for planting, or just burnt in raging fires caused by climate change, these projects offer a glimmer of hope. And the sheer numbers of the trees planted are truly awe-inspiring.
India has an impressive number of inspiring characters who are leading the way in reforestation projects. Jaggi Vasudev, more commonly referred to as Sadhguru, founder of the Isha Foundation, says his ambition is to plant 2.4 billion trees. And with his gleaming white turban and flowing white beard the yogi, mystic, teacher and author has the gravitas to convince even the doubters that this ambitious plan is completely achievable.
Here in Johannesburg we are constantly told we live in “the biggest man-made forest in the world” with more than 10 million trees growing in the city.
But Johannesburg is in danger of losing its place as the leading tree destination in the world, because our trees are not immune to the city’s dangerously high crime rate. As yet the trees don’t have a category in the crime stats, but if the rate of attrition continues to climb, the police commissioner will be reeling off some depressing figures of deaths, damage and murders.
The biggest culprit is the aptly named shot hole borer, also known as PSHB (the P stands for polyphagous, which means the beetle can feed on multiple types of trees).
Here is an expert definition of this criminal’s modus operandi: “The beetle infests trees by tunnelling deep into the trunk or branches and depositing a fungus that effectively poisons — and eventually kills — the tree. If the tree is a PSHB ‘reproductive host’ species, then the borer will reproduce in the tree at an alarming rate: a reproductive host tree can house up to 100 000 borer beetles. The offspring then fly out of the host tree and infest more trees.”
Evidence of this habitual criminal’s killing spree can be seen all over Johannesburg. Bare, blackened tree skeletons with rotting branches.
Unfortunately the lethal little bug is not the only criminal attacking our trees. Humans won’t let a two-millimetre sized insect from Vietnam outdo them when it comes to murdering trees.
I have seen jacaranda trees viciously attacked by chainsaw-wielding suburbanites because they are unhappy with the “mess” from the leaves and the beautiful mauve blossoms when they fall.
I have seen a majestic plane tree in Bez Valley ruthlessly sawn down at ground level because a homeowner had opened a hair salon in his garage and didn’t want the tree to impede the entrance.
I have seen massive oak trees subjected to hideously slow deaths by criminals who set fire to piles of the trees’ own leaves at the base of the trunk.
These are trees that are on the pavement and supposedly belong to the city, but much like the smash-and-grabbers at traffic lights or armed hijackers who drive off with your car, not many of the tree killers are brought to justice.
The problem here might be that all of the trees mentioned are what is politely termed “exotics” brought in from Europe and South America to line the streets of the first suburbs of the rapidly expanding city. Some, like the jacaranda, adapted so well to their new home and reproduced so abundantly that they have been declared “alien invasive plants guzzling up all the town’s water and are harmful to the environment and surrounding species”.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it?
Even by today’s standards the tree situation cannot be called a genocide but Sebastião Salgado would surely have found inspiration here for his searing photographs.
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