Corruption is a Crime

Labour ministers are refusing to assist the Americans’ investigation into alleged corruption by BAE, the Guardian reports.

The newspaper claims that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith hasn’t approved a request for assistance made by the US authorities two months ago.

The formal request for assistance came from the US department of justice earlier in the summer, but Ms Smith has refused to pass it on to the Serious Fraud Office for processing in the normal way.

This is unusual behaviour towards a major ally, with whom legal cooperation is normally automatic. Last night, the Home Office said its failure to pass on the request was “not unprecedented”, but could not give any example of similar behaviour.

The SFO possesses important files on BAE gained from its own major inquiry into £1bn of payments to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia and other Swiss bank accounts linked to the Saudi royal family. But SFO investigators are not allowed to speak to US authorities until Home Office officials forward the paperwork.

The Government’s failure to assist the US inquiry has been condemned by Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb, who is quoted in the same story:

“There is no justification for delay. This information should be handed over immediately. Again, one is left with the suspicion that by refusing to cooperate, the government is more interested in securing arms deals than in the pursuit of justice.

“It makes a mockery of the government’s assertion that they are robustly tackling corruption.”

Read the full story here.

Liberal Democrat leader Ming Campbell put the Al Yamamah arms deal at the centre of his criticism of the Labour Government during his leader’s speech at the party’s Brighton Conference:

Our mission is to change the British political landscape, once and for all:

To throw open the doors of government and let the people in.

No more sleazy patronage, no more dodgy dossiers, no more abandoned investigations into secret arms deals – in fact, no more secret arms deals, full stop!

Read his full speech on the Liberal Democrat website.

The UK Government has failed to modernise and toughen anti-corruption laws. It withdrew its own Corruption Bill and hasn’t backed reforms proposed by Transparency International.

Writing in The Times, lawyer Jeremy Summers criticises the Government’s failures on corruption.

But Britain’s enforcement record, in sharp contrast, remains poor. Already reeling from the decision to halt the BAE Systems al-Yamamah investigation, it recently suffered another setback when the Government was forced to withdraw its Corruption Bill in a state of disarray.

Remarkably, the Government has also refused to support an alternative and far more workable Corruption Bill proposed by the leading international antibribery body, Transparency International (TI). Instead, it has asked the Law Commission to propose alternative legislation, with the effect that any new law is unlikely to be in force until 2009 at the earliest.

The UK’s anticorruption legislation, which has remained largely unchanged since 1916, was essentially formulated to deal with the then principal evil, corruption in public office. But the pace and international nature of commerce has changed dramatically and it is universally accepted that new legislation to tackle modern-day corruption is needed.

The article goes on to tell how the latest attempts to reform the law have stalled, concluding:

Many now argue persuasively that the perception of political interference in the al-Yamamah decision has greatly compromised the Government’s position on corruption.

The full ramifications of that decision remain to be seen, but in the interim the failure to bring in new legislation – even though a respected independent body has provided credible way forward – does the Government little credit.

Read the full article here.