Corruption is a Crime

The High Court has ruled that British Aerospace must reveal how it got hold of a confidential internal document from CAAT (Campaign Against Arms Trade) about CAAT’s application for a judicial review over the Al Yamamah arms deal. More details are on CAAT’s website.

Speaking in a Commons debate on Strategic Export Controls last Thursday, Susan Kramer, the Liberal Democrats’ Shadow Trade & Industry Secretary, noted that:

The chances of being caught for travelling without a ticket on the London Underground are considerably higher than for illegally exporting arms from the UK.

In a detailed speech, Susan went on to question the “third-party arms transactions that would be illegal were they carried out directly from the UK, and the trend among UK companies to move arms production from the UK offshore to places with lighter licensing regimes”, to call for the banning of cluster bombs, and for an enforceable common EU position on arms exports.

Vince Cable, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats, has criticised BAE’s £1.2 billion profits as “utterly artificial”.

“The company’s profits depend on major, UK government-supported, export contracts around which there are unresolved allegations of corrupt commission payouts and pending prosecutions, or on favoured contracts for government procurement.”

Vince lead the recent Liberal Democrat opposition debate in the House of Commons, where he criticised the ending of the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the Al-Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia. He went on to criticise the Government’s closeness to BAE:

“The government itself is hopelessly compromised by mutual backscratching with the company, over both domestic contracts and the defence sales sector.

“Despite BAE’s poor record of cost overruns and delays on defence projects, the government continues to distort its policy priorities, pushing through the Trident renewal decision years ahead of a timetable dictated by security considerations, partly in order to meet BAE’s commercial priorities.”

The Liberal Democrats have launched a petition calling for an inquiry into the ending of the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the Al-Yamamah arms deal involving Saudi Arabia and BAE Systems plc (part of which was formerly British Aerospace).

The decision has been criticised by Liberal Democrats in both Houses of Parliament, was taken in December. The Government claimed it was taken in the interests of national security.

Sign our petition now:

We, the undersigned, call for an independent inquiry into the reasons for the ending of the Serious Fraud Office investigation of the Saudi Arabian export sales and BAE Systems plc.