The payment comes after a December 2010 Crown Court verdict ordering BAE to pay a £500,000 (US$ 775,000) fine after the company pleaded guilty to charges that they failed to keep sufficient financial records in Tanzania. Central to the investigation was a marketing adviser, Shailesh Vithlani, who helped BAE sell a radar system to the Tanzanian government in 1999. Although the company was not convicted of corruption or bribery, civil society activists alleged that Vithlani used the money to bribe officials.
The court also ordered BAE to cover the costs accrued by the SFO and to make an ex gratia payment of £29.5 million for an undetermined benefit of the Tanzanian people.
The donation will be meted out by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) will purchase textbooks for each of the country’s 16,000 primary schools, benefiting 8.3 million children. The money will also purchase desks in nine districts determined to have the greatest need.
The 2010 verdict was the result of a six year investigation into foreign bribery allegations against BAE. The company also pleaded guilty to conspiring to make false statements to the US Government about misconduct in several countries and paid a US$ 400 million fine to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) in February 2010. The fine was one of the largest in the history of the DOJ.
The SFO spent six years investigating possible political corruption in BAE arms sales to the governments of Chile, the Czech Republic, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tanzania and Qatar. Tanzania was the only country involved in the verdict.
