by René Lavanchy
Campaigners are hoping to mount a legal challenge to the Serious Fraud Office’s decision to kill off its major investigation into alleged multi-million-pound worldwide bribery by arms giant BAE Systems.
The SFO announced last week it was terminating probes into BAE’s activities in six different countries after the company agreed a plea bargain deal with the SFO and the United States Department of Justice. The deal means that allegations of a bribery network in South Africa and Europe will not now be tested in court.
But Campaign Against Arms Trade and The Corner House, which have pressed for several years for BAE to be prosecuted for bribery, said this week they hoped to persuade the High Court to force the SFO to reopen the case. A spokesperson said: “We’re just considering what the possibilities might be. We’re looking at the possible grounds for a challenge. I don’t think there’s been a plea bargain like this before in such large terms.”
The case is the first in which the SFO has used a US-style plea bargain. BAE has admitted a charge of “failing to keep reasonably accurate accounting records” over its Tanzanian contract and agreed to pay £250 million in the US and £30 million in this country.
But reports last year said that the SFO – which was apparently hopeful of mounting a successful case against BAE until last week – was pursuing the firm for a £200-500 million fine. It is also unclear why the SFO has ended its investigations into contracts in all six countries, when BAE only admitted a charge regarding Tanzania.
Commenting on the SFO’s decision to drop the case, former South African MP Andrew Feinstein and anti-corruption campaigner Susan Hawley wrote in The Guardian this week: “The lack of an admission of guilt means no details or evidence will emerge about the payments BAE allegedly made in Tanzania, South Africa, the Czech Republic , Hungary and Romania. The people in those countries deserve to know how much they were being ripped off by BAE and which officials were being paid off.”
An earlier case against BAE over an alleged £1 billion bribe in a Saudi Arabian arms contract was dropped in December 2006 after then Prime Minister Tony Blair intervened.
