Corruption is a Crime

Tanzania’s infrastructure minister, Andrew Chenge, resigned at the weekend after “being allegedly linked to a controversial BAE Systems defence contract that is being investigated by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office”, the Daily Telegraph reports.

The newspaper provides some background information:

The SFO is probing a 2002 contract under which BAE supplied Tanzania with a military radar system, a deal that was strongly criticised by aid agencies and politicians, including the then UK International Development Secretary Clare Short.
[...]
Despite the SFO abandoning its high-profile investigation into BAE’s Al Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia, the fraud office has continued to probe several other overseas deals.

Poverty-stricken Tanzania bought a £28m military air traffic control system from BAE, when many experts said a far cheaper civil system would have done.

You can read the full story on the Telegraph website.

The Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg MP, has written to Prime Minister Gordon Brown urging him to re-open the the Serious Fraud Office’s investigation into the Al-Yamamah arms deal and demanding a full inquiry into how it came to be dropped.

This follows yesterday’s ruling by the High Court that the SFO acted unlawfully when it suspended - under direction from the Labour Government - its investigation into the deal between BAE and Saudi Arabia.

Nick Clegg also calls on the Prime Minister to update Parliament on the progress of other investigations into alleged corruption by British companies, and on UK Government cooperation with the US Justice Department’s investigation into alleged bribery by BAE.

Here’s the letter in full:
Read the rest of this entry »

The BBC is reporting that the High Court has ruled that the Serious Fraud Office “acted unlawfully” in shutting down its inquiry into the BAE/Al-Yamamah arms deal. The court has criticised the director of the SFO for “failing to resist threat from government”.

The judicial review case was brought by Campaigns Against Arms Trade who had said the decision to drop the inquiry was illegal under international anti-bribery agreements.

According to the BBC’s coverage, the Labour Government was concerned that the SFO’s investigation would jeopardise a deal to sell Typhoon fighters to Saudi Arabia - an economic consideration rather than the “national security” argument the Government and the SFO claimed.

We hope the SFO will now resume its investigation, and you can back our campaign for an inquiry to how the SFO came to drop its inquiry by signing the petition on the right-hand side of the page.

thisismoney.co.uk reports:

The ethics review into scandal-hit BAE Systems could be delayed for up to three months amid suspicions it will present a whitewash report into the activities of the controversial defence firm.

The probe into BAE’s business ethics by the independent committee, chaired by former chief justice Lord Woolf, is already almost a month overdue.And it appears Woolf - who has pocketed an estimated £500,000 in fees so far, all paid for by BAE - is in no hurry to get it finished. Sources have suggested his findings might not emerge until June.