42 lines
6.1 KiB
Markdown
42 lines
6.1 KiB
Markdown
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updated: 2026-10-08
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tags:
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- Organization
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- Private
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- SouthAfrica
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- ArmsManufacturer
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category: "Private Organization"
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summary: "ARMSCOR (South African Arms Corporation) is South Africa's state weapons manufacturer that played a significant role in covert Cold War arms trafficking through its dealings with Carlos Cardoen, Gerald Bull, and Israeli defense contractors under apartheid-era sanctions evasion arrangements."
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start: 1968
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location: "Pretoria, South Africa"
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---
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[[ARMSCOR]] (South African Arms Corporation) is the government weapons manufacturer of [[South Africa]]. It played a significant role in the international arms trade, particularly in its dealings with [[Carlos Cardoen]] and [[Gerald Bull]], and its involvement in supplying [[Iraq]].[^1]
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In 1979, Carlos Cardoen obtained a brokering license from ARMSCOR after being rejected by [[Israel]]. This allowed him to begin his work as an arms producer and broker.[^1]
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ARMSCOR collaborated with Cardoen in selling arms to Iraq. [[Alan Sanders]] of [[ITICO]] provided technology for cluster bombs to Cardoen, which were then produced with a covert [[United States|U.S.]] license.[^1]
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In 1983, ARMSCOR contracted Gerald Bull for his "supergun" artillery project, following an introduction by [[Mark Thatcher]] and [[Pieter Van Der Westhuizen|Gen. Pieter Van Der Westhuizen]], chief of [[South African Defense Force]].[^1]
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ARMSCOR was represented at a meeting in [[Santiago]], [[Chile]], in late 1986, where U.S. officials, including [[Robert Gates]], reaffirmed their intention to maintain arms channels to Iraq through South Africa and Chile.[^1]
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In late 1988, Gen. Pieter Van Der Westhuizen informed [[Ari Ben-Menashe]] that South Africa had stopped the flow of technology to Iraq, claiming it was due to a decision to resume nuclear cooperation with Israel. However, Israeli intelligence later confirmed that while South Africa was not directly dealing with Iraq, it was involved with Chile, which continued to supply Iraq through the Cardoen network. The [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] reportedly used ARMSCOR to facilitate the transfer of nuclear technology to Iraq.[^1]
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### Shipments from International Signal and Control
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ARMSCOR was named as a defendant in *United States v. Armaments Corporation of South Africa Ltd., et al.*, Crim. No. 91-602 (E.D. Pa.), announced on October 31, 1991 together with the indictment of [[James Guerin]] of [[International Signal and Control]].[^2] The [[United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit|Third Circuit]] later described the 67-count indictment as charging that ISC and Armscor conspired to export American arms, munitions and weapons technology to Armscor to enhance its inventory and enable it to market weapons systems to other countries, and to import South African missile components into the United States for testing to facilitate the sale of Striker missiles to China.[^3]
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Three South African firms were indicted in 1991 for cooperating with ISC to smuggle munitions, restricted commodities and technology to South Africa from 1978 to 1989, and seven American defendants, including ISC's chief executive, entered guilty pleas. In February 1997 Armscor and [[Kentron]] settled in federal court in Philadelphia, Armscor with a fine of one million dollars and Kentron with 500,000 dollars, and [[Fuchs Electronics]] pleaded guilty to 11 related charges and was fined ten million dollars. The plea agreement records that Armscor and Kentron had obtained shipments from ISC by routing them through front companies.[^4] The [[State Department]] had imposed a policy of denial on Fuchs in June 1994 after an indictment in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and Fuchs pleaded guilty to violating the Arms Export Control Act on February 27, 1997.[^5]
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When [[Nelson Mandela]] became president in 1994, the United States declined to drop the charges. The South African government argued that a state-owned company was not subject to United States prosecution and refused to forward United States court papers to Armscor, citing sovereignty, and the United States responded by imposing an embargo on Armscor and banning it from doing business in the United States. Mandela asked President Clinton personally to drop the case in 1995 and Clinton declined, saying the matter was in the hands of the Department of Justice. A compromise of July 1996 provided that Armscor would pay a fine and accept some form of international supervision, and that the United States would drop its embargo.[^4]
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An Open Secrets report of October 2017, based on South African military documents, states that in March 1990 the head of Armscor's security department wrote to his counterpart in South African Defense Force counterintelligence, enclosing a memorandum from an internal Armscor investigation of ISC. The report says the purchase and resale of ISC missile technology ran through Kentron and an ISC cut-out, ISC Technology, with communications routed through covert Armscor offices in [[Italy]] and [[Hong Kong]], and that the resale was to the People's Republic of China. It also states that senior Armscor officials were worried the American investigations of ISC threatened other Armscor operations.[^6]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. TrineDay, 1992.
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[^2]: SEC Digest, November 7, 1991, Litigation Release LR-13077. https://www.sec.gov/news/digest/1991/dig110791.pdf
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[^3]: *United States v. Jasin*, 280 F.3d 355 (3d Cir. 2002). https://static.case.law/f3d/280/cases/0355-01.json
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[^4]: "South African Firms Settle Arms Smuggling Case," Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control (undated). https://www.wisconsinproject.org/south-african-firms-settle-arms-smuggling-case/
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[^5]: Department of State, Office of Defense Trade Controls, Public Notice 2522, *Federal Register* 62, no. 56 (March 24, 1997), p. 13933. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1997-03-24/html/97-7273.htm
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[^6]: Open Secrets, "Declassified: Apartheid Profits," *Daily Maverick*, October 9, 2017. Sole source for the 1990 memorandum and the China resale. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-10-09-declassified-apartheid-profits-american-guns/
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