John Bredenkamp

John Bredenkamp    (businessman, rugby player.)
Born	August 11, 1940
The founder of the Casalee Group

John Arnold Bredenkamp (born 11 August 1940) was born in Kimberley, South Africa and relocated to Rhodesia as a child along with his family. He is a Zimbabwean businessman and former rugby player. John Bredenkamp is the founder of the Casalee Group, which comprised a large network of branches across Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Greece, India, Russia, Spain and Thailand, as well as the American branch in Winston-Salem.

In 1993, the Casalee Group was sold to Universal Leaf Tobacco, the largest leaf tobacco company in the world.

In June 2013, John Bredenkamp sued British Foreign Secretary William Hague after he discovered the British Government was behind a decision to blacklist him for supporting Robert Mugabe. In documents filed at the High Court, Bredenkamp’s lawyers said the Foreign Office’s evidence was “based on entirely unsubstantiated, undocumented and unparticularised comments made orally to the former ambassador of the United Kingdom to Zimbabwe, Dr Andrew Pocock”.

A representative of Mr Bredenkamp’s who attended court but refused to give his name told The Independent that “everything that has ever been written about him is fictitious and based on no evidence”. He added: “If you Google Mr Bredenkamp he is supposed to have stolen nuclear bombs. It is ridiculous.”

Early life

Born in Kimberley, South Africa, Bredenkamp moved with his family to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) while he was still a child. He was orphaned in his mid-teens on his birthday. Whilst he was out on his bicycle, his father shot his mother and sister and then shot himself. His sister survived the shooting. He was educated in Southern Rhodesia at Prince Edward School, Salisbury (now Harare). Of Dutch ancestry, Bredenkamp registered as a Rhodesian citizen in 1958. He is reported to have lost Zimbabwean citizenship "by default" in 1984, but this was restored to him shortly thereafter.

Bredenkamp is reported to hold Zimbabwean, South African and Dutch passports. His nationality was a matter of dispute with some Zimbabwean officials towards the end of 2006.

As a Rugby Union international, he captained Rhodesia from 1965 to 1968.

Early career

After his graduation, Bredenkamp joined Gallaher Limited, an international tobacco company in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), as a leaf buyer. In 1968 he was transferred to Niemeyer in Holland, where he rose to the position of leaf director.

After leaving Gallaher in 1976 Bredenkamp founded the Casalee Group of companies registered in Antwerp, Belgium. It is believed that the Casalee operation was involved in the sale of Rhodesian tobacco on world markets, through evasion of UN sanctions. Casalee was primarily a leaf tobacco merchanting company but was also engaged in general trading and an active initiator of counter trade and barter deals. The Casalee Group grew over 16 years to become the fifth largest tobacco merchant in the world and the biggest non-US leaf tobacco company. The Group employed 2,500 people and had offices in all the major tobacco growing countries in the world including the USA (Winston-Salem), Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Greece, India, Indonesia, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey and Yugoslavia. The company owned tobacco-processing factories in Holland, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Brazil.

The Casalee Group of companies was sold in 1993 to Universal Leaf Tobacco, the largest leaf tobacco company in the world. Since then, Bredenkamp has expanded his business interests into many other different areas, mainly through the Zimbabwe registered Breco company.

Role in Zimbabwe

Bredenkamp's career took off in earnest during the late 1970s when he became deeply involved in the commercial affairs of the embargoed UDI regime in Rhodesia. It has been claimed that he effectively ran the finances of the Rhodesian armed forces during the later stages of the Bush War. In this capacity, he brokered export sales of Rhodesian products (mainly tobacco) and used the proceeds to fund the purchase of munitions and military equipment. His "sanctions busting" deals (often involving complex barter transactions) arguably helped sustain the UDI regime for far longer than would otherwise have been possible. These deals were entirely legal under Rhodesian law.

After independence in 1980, Bredenkamp left Zimbabwe and moved his base of operations to Belgium. However, he remained involved in commodity trading and defence procurement. He made himself useful in certain quarters. In 1984 he made his peace with the rulers of the new Zimbabwe and was able to return home. Zimbabwe provided a hospitable base for Bredenkamp's dealings with customers in Africa and the Middle East. These dealings made Bredenkamp and his associates very wealthy men. They also helped sustain the Zimbabwean economy in a time of some turbulence.

Bredenkamp gained considerable clout in the political and economic affairs of Zimbabwe. It is known that he played a significant role in the events surrounding Zimbabwe's intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1998 and 2003. This intervention involved using the Zimbabwean army and air force to support the Kabila government in its war with rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda. There appears to have been some linkage between the intervention and generous mining concessions granted by the DRC to figures in the Zimbabwe political and business elite. When Zimbabwe was subject to EU sanctions from 1999 onwards, the Mugabe regime was able to call on sanctions busting expertise from the UDI era in order to keep its armed forces supplied.

Bredenkamp became something of a power behind the scenes in the ruling ZANU-PF party. It is claimed that he sought to facilitate the early retirement of Robert Mugabe in 2004 and his replacement by Emmerson Mnangagwa, former Security Minister and Speaker of Parliament. This displeased rival factions in ZANU-PF, and government investigations were started into the affairs of Bredenkamp's Breco trading company concerning tax evasion and exchange control violations. The matters under investigation were transactions between Breco in Zimbabwe and offshore companies controlled by Bredenkamp.

At one stage (in June 2006), Bredenkamp was wrongly reported to have fled Zimbabwe.

In September 2006 Bredenkamp was tried in Zimbabwe on charges that he used a South African passport on international journeys. Zimbabwean citizenship law does not permit dual nationality. Although acquitted, he had to fight a second court case to obtain an order to return his Zimbabwe passport which the clerk of the court had retained. He was ordered to produce documentary evidence of his renunciation of South African citizenship in order to have his nationality restored permanently. But his passport was returned.

UK Intelligence & the International Arms Trade

There are multiple sources corroborating Bredenkamp's extensive involvement in the arms trade, not least the former Finance Director of Casalee Mike Pelham:

"The objective was to arrange an introduction between a supplier to a purchaser. Casalee would do that. The arms would then be transferred from the manufacturer directly to the purchaser and on the deal having been finalized then a commission would be paid from the manufacturer to the agent, in this case Casalee."

And on Casalee's involvement in the sale of anti-aircraft guns to Iran by Oerlikon-Bührle, a Swiss arms manufacturer:

"The amount sold into Iran would run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The commission ... would be 5% on an excess of 100 to 200 millions.... Every deal that went through had to have a bribe of some sort attached to it. The money would be paid to Casalee, and then Casalee would make the necessary payments to those people of influence in the purchasing country. For the manufacturer to make those payments it would become a little dicey. For an intermediary like Casalee or other companies of that nature to make the payment is not at all difficult. On the manufacturer's books all you would get is that a commission would have been made to an agent, Casalee, and an investigation would not be made into Casalee's books after a disposal of the funds."

In his book "In the Public Interest", Gerald James describes Bredenkamp's arms trade and British SIS involvement thus:

Casalee had bases all over the world, including America, Luxembourg and of course Brussels, with its special understanding of the intelligence services of Britain. ... Casalee made its vast wealth acting as middleman to all the major players in the arms industry with the blessing of both US and British Intelligence. According to the Belgian Public Prosecutor, Casalee was in fact largely connected and controlled by MI5, the British Intelligence service with responsibilities in former colonies.

Secrecy and security were paramount in Casalee, a company which represented the interests of the most powerful governments in the Western World. So close was Bredenkamp with the government of apartheid South Africa, with its crucial contacts in British and US Intelligence, that in 1986 he had been allowed to appoint the Managing Director of Armscor to spearhead a drive into Europe, just as the British Government was getting its own Arms-to-Iraq business into top gear.

As Chairman of British arms manufacturer Astra Holdings throughout the the period that produced the Arms-to-Iraq scandal, Gerald James was in a better position than most to understand the finer points of Casalee's Intelligence and arms trade involvement.

External links

• Breco website
• Bredenkamp holds Dutch passport
• Bredenkamp holds Dutch passport (free access)
• Dutch Public Prosecutor to investigate Bredenkamp

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