German ships for Angola?

[kato]

TKMS has recently been probed by German police on corruption charges in connection with a tender for an Angolan requirement of "one corvette and three coast guard ships" worth some 750 million euro. The tender is from mid-2006.

Now, does anyone have any information what kind of ships TKMS was trying to sell there?

In particular regarding the "coast guard ships" - any chance of these being Guardian or Sentinel OPVs, which were presented by TKMS at MECON 2006 and are the only OPVs in TKMS' portfolio at the moment?

Guardian OPV is supposed to be a 80m budget ship built with commercial standards and light armament, primarily for civilian and police purposes - budget ship as in 30 million euro as a basic price.
Sentinel OPV is a rehashed Meko A100 (another name for the Sentinel is Meko 100 OPV), modified into a multi-role system much like the Meko A200 MRV - basically modified from the Malaysian Kedah class.

The "corvette" would also be interesting. Possibility of an identical Meko A100 hull with heavier armament (Sentinel in "Navy" outfit)? Or a Meko A200 disguised under the name corvette as in South Africa?

The high cost of 750 million euro would suggest the "pricier" alternatives for both parts.

[Falstaff]

Originally Posted by kato

The "corvette" would also be interesting. Possibility of an identical Meko A100 hull with heavier armament (Sentinel in "Navy" outfit)? Or a Meko A200 disguised under the name corvette as in South Africa?

The corvette is supposed to be a MEKO A 200, I don't know about the other 3.
According to "Der Spiegel" No. 07/2008 the corvette's price tag is about 290 million and the same amount of money for the three other vessels together. Rest of the 750 million is for logistics, simulators, infrastructure and service. Leaves about 96 million for each of the coast guard vessels. Perhaps one can draw conclusions from that?

[contedicavour]

Well Angola is awash with oil money and currently has no operational patrol crafts, so eventually it will have to buy ships... with South Africa having Mekos it would make sense to buy similar ships to ensure some policing coordination. Strange though that I had never heard of this deal before.

cheers

[kato]

Originally Posted by contedicavour

Strange though that I had never heard of this deal before.

Same here actually. Until the news popped up about some potential corruption last week, the tender was kept completely silent over here.

Somewhat detailed South-African press on that deal: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx...ght__national/

[kato]

The above deal is apparently being revived now (Merkel is in Luanda right now), however Lürssen seems to be in on it instead of TKMS, and it's a lot cheaper this time. Six to eight OPV for something like 100-120 million Euro.