Thatcher again denies he helped finance coup plot

Sir Mark Thatcher left court a South African court today expressing confidence he had cleared away suspicions he had any role in a foiled coup plot featuring wealthy European financiers, soldiers of fortune and an African dictatorship.

“It is patently clear that I had nothing to do with financing any coup in Equatorial Guinea,” said the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Wearing a dark suit and mauve shirt, Thatcher had spent just over an hour patiently replying to 43 questions submitted last September by Equatorial Guinean prosecutors and read out by a Cape Town magistrate.

He repeatedly had to strain to hear above shouts from neighbouring courtrooms and interruptions by handcuffed prisoners and police emerging from cells beneath the grimy chamber.

Thatcher’s lawyer George van Niekerk said it was likely the final court appearance in the case for his client, who last month struck a plea bargain with South African prosecutors.

Thatcher pleaded guilty to violating South Africa’s anti-mercenary laws by unwittingly helping bankroll the plot. He received a four-year suspended sentence and was fined £270,000 and allowed to leave South Africa.

The replies Thatcher gave today will now be sent to authorities in Equatorial Guinea, which has made no sign of following up on earlier demands for Thatcher’s extradition.

During questioning, he conceded providing funding for a helicopter at the centre of the botched coup, which was uncovered by South African authorities in March 2004, but said he thought it was meant to be an air ambulance rather than for military purposes.

Thatcher also said he knew eight of 11 people named by Equatorial Guinea as alleged financiers of the plot. But he said his contacts with the likes of novelist and former Conservative Party chairman Jeffrey Archer and oil millionaire Eli Calil were social rather than business.

He said his last meeting with former SAS officer Simon Mann, one of the alleged leaders who is now in prison in Zimbabwe, revolved around babies, not military plots.

Guinean President Teodoro Obiang’s 25 year regime accuses Thatcher and others, most of them British, of funding a plot to install an opposition leader as a puppet and thus control Africa’s third biggest oil producer.

The questions, which were littered with spelling mistakes and poor grammar, focused on Thatcher’s acquaintances, travels, phone calls, financial transactions and business deals.

They were prepared last September for use as evidence against 24 Europeans and Africans arrested in Equatorial Guinea. Thatcher at the time refused to answer the questions and the trial went ahead anyway. Among those convicted was South African arms dealer Nick du Toit, one of the alleged ringleaders, who was sentenced to 34 years in prison.

“It is a mystery to me why I should give evidence in a trial that ended four months ago,” Thatcher said today.

He agreed to answer the questions as part of his plea bargain.

In the plea bargain, he admitted to suspicions the helicopter might be used for military reasons. But today, he said he had been told by the aviation company that the helicopter was to be used as an air ambulance. There was no cross examination into the discrepancy.

Thatcher’s wife and two children are living in Texas and he sold his estate in the exclusive Cape Town suburb of Constantia last week.

But he said he wanted to buy another property in Cape Town and had already seen four or five possibilities.