JOHANNESBURG, Sept 6: South African officials investigating a local businessman's alleged links to a global nuclear smuggling ring raided his premises and seized several containers as officials from the UN nuclear watchdog launched their own probe in the country.

The lawyer for Johan Meyer, 53, who was arrested on Thursday and charged a day later with three counts of possessing sensitive nuclear-related equipment and of illegally importing and exporting nuclear material, said the raids were carried out over the weekend.

An official at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it had dispatched investigators to South Africa. "We have sent a team of investigators to South Africa to work with the authorities as part of ongoing efforts to understand the nuclear black market," a spokesman for the body said.

A Western nuclear expert said the IAEA's investigation was exploring links between Mr Meyer and Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's secret network to help Libya develop an atomic weapons programme.

He said the investigation was wider than Mr Meyer, as there may be other South African companies involved in the network, but that these may not realize that they were part of an illicit trade because the equipment involved could also be used for legal purposes.

Mr Meyer's lawyer, Heinrich Badenhorst, said raids on his client's business premises over the weekend led to the confiscation of "a number of containers pertaining to their probe", but added that he did not know their contents. "My client was just as surprised as we were about it," he said.

The Johannesburg-based Afrikaans daily Beeld said 11 large crates were taken from Meyer's company in Vanderbijlpark, about 80 kilometres south of Johannesburg, on Saturday.

Quoting unnamed sources, the newspaper said South African officials, under the supervision of an IAEA team, dismantled what it described as a suspected uranium enrichment plant. The crates were taken to Pelindaba, west of Pretoria and once the home of South Africa's nuclear weapons programme under apartheid. -AFP