Engineering news
BAE Systems could face further court actions in Britain over bribery and corruption charges after campaigners won an injunction against a £30 million settlement the defence giant made with the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).
The deal with the SFO, which saw BAE fined after pleading guilty to “accounting irregularities” in a 1999 deal to supply a radar system to Tanzania, has come under attack from the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and social justice pressure group The Corner House, which have successfully persuaded the High Court to consider a judicial review of the case.
The court will make a decision on a review on March 20th.
Kaye Stearman of CAAT said that the financial penalty imposed on BAE by the SFO in the UK was “pretty minimal”.
“We would like to see allegations about BAE bribery in a whole range of countries, which have been around for years and years, aired in court,” she said.
Meanwhile, it is thought that if BAE were found guilty of corruption charges in the US, it could curtail its ability to bid for military contracts there. US authorities have already fined BAE $400 million for making false statements in 2001-2002 relating to arms deals in Saudi Arabia, and have placed a temporary hold on weapons export licenses sought by the company.
In Britain, CAAT contends that the SFO failed to follow its own prosecution guidelines on the £30 million plea bargain it struck with BAE. Stearman said there was a “strong case” for a judicial review and that concerns over national security, cited by Tony Blair as a reason to drop an earlier SFO probe into BAE’s dealings in Saudi Arabia, should not be used as an excuse this time.
She said: “We’ve got a case involving two Commonwealth countries, South Africa and Tanzania, and two EU members, the Czech Republic and Romania. No one can possibly come up with national security grounds here, and it appears there has been no direct government intervention.”
Stearman said the case was “arousing a lot of interest”. “It really has international ramifications, and it looks as though BAE operated in a pretty underhand way. We don’t think that financial penalties alone are going to expose any of that so we really want to see it go through the courts.”
BAE Systems declined to comment on the injunction.