The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said yesterday it would ask the UK’s Attorney General to prosecute BAE Systems, which is Britain’s largest defense company with 105,000 employees worldwide and makes planes, warships and submarines. At issue are contracts worth millions of dollars that BAE won to sell or lease aircraft to the Czech Republic and South Africa, to sell two frigates to Romania, and to sell air-traffic control equipment to Tanzania.
SFO director Richard Alderman had demanded a plea deal that would force BAE to pay large penalties and promise reform in exchange for the SFO dropping its insistence on prosecution, reported the BBC. The company did not settle by the SFO’s Sept. 30 deadline. The Attorney General will decide whether to move foreward with criminal proceedings, which could take several weeks.
BAE Denies Bribes
BAE has denied any involvement in bribery. This week the company said in a statement that it would be ready to face prosecutors in court if that becomes necessary.
Allegations of bribery involving BAE’s sales abroad are nothing new. Most recently, the SFO investigated a $68 billion deal that supplied Saudi Arabia with 72 Tornado and 30 Hawk jets in the 1980s. Allegations emerged that the contract had been won through BAE’s payment of bribes in the hundreds of millions of dollars. BAE and Saudi officials denied the allegations.
In 2006, the government under then-Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered the SFO to halt its investigation of the deal, on the grounds that Saudi Arabia might withdraw information-sharing on terrorism, endangering Britain’s national security. The decision prompted widespread condemnation from anti-corruption activists; Britain’s High Court last year said the SFO acted unlawfully by dropping the investigation.
The US Department of Justice is still investigating the Saudi case.
--Beth Kampschror
