Unlawful

In December 2006, after pressure from UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, the UK's Serious Fraud Office pulled the plug on an investigation into massive corruption by giant British arms dealer BAE. Today, the High Court ruled that that decision was unlawful:

"No one, whether within this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice," he said.

"It is the failure of government and the defendant to bear that essential principle in mind that justifies the intervention of this court."

It's a victory for the rule of law, and it will hopefully result in the case being reopened. OTOH, the government acted shamelessly to protect corruption when they first closed the case, and its unlikely they have grown a sense of shame since.

Perversion of the course of justice

Last year, the British government turned a blind eye to corruption and shut down an investigation into allegations that BAE paid the Saudi royal family hundreds of millions of pounds in bribes to secure a multi-billion pound arms deal in the 80's. A coalition of NGOs is challenging that decision in the courts, and in the process revealing the full extent of the Saudi aristocracy's threats to preserve their corrupt kickbacks:

Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.

Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.

Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.

He was accused in yesterday's high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family.

There's a name for this: perversion of the course of justice. And in the UK (as in most other jurisdictions), it faces a hefty jail term. And that is exactly what should happen to Prince Bandar.

Not that the British government comes out of this smelling of roses either. Rather than bothering to explain that it is constitutionally improper for the government to interfere in prosecutorial decisions, they simply buckled to the Saudis and pulled the plug - something the judges regard as extraordinary. Of course, they had other considerations as well - namely ensuring that BAE could make future corrupt deals with Saudi Arabia - and that probably made themmore willing to bow to threats.

But what's really extraordinary is that after all this, the UK and US still regard Saudi Arabia as an ally. A top official in the Saudi government explicitly threatens terrorist attacks to preserve his wealth, and they're still considered a friendly country? WTF is going on here?

The quid pro quo

Last year, the British government turned a blind eye to corruption and shut down an investigation into allegations that BAE paid the Saudi royal family hundreds of millions of pounds in bribes to secure a multi-billion pound arms deal in the 80's. Today, the Saudis have anounced that they will be buying 72 Eurofighters at a total cost of 20 billion pounds. I wonder how much their corrupt monarchy is getting in kickbacks and slush funds for that purchase?

One hand washes the other

Last year, the British government turned a blind eye to corruption and shut down an investigation into allegations that BAE paid the Saudi royal family hundreds of millions of pounds in bribes to secure a multi-billion pound arms deal in the 80's. Now, the Independent reports that Saudi Arabia is ordering billions of pounds of trainer jets from them as well. I guess they must like the "no questions asked" service...

Yet more unethical investing

I'd avoided reading the Listener this week because of the picture of Princess Diana on the cover. But in amongst the lifestyle crap, including an inane piece on a reader's poll from six years ago, there is a serious piece by Matt Nippert following up on his earlier expose of unethical (and possibly illegal) investments by Crown Financial Institutions. It seems the government had invested $14 milion of taxpayer's money in British arms manufacturer BAE Systems. I say "had" because it's probably worth a lot less now, given that the share price dropped 11% on the news that they were being investigated by the US Justice Department for the same corrupt deals that Tony Blair deliberately turned a blind eye to "in the national interest". But despite the fact that it is now the subject of two separate investigations on both sides of the Atlantic, the New Zealand Superannuation Fund is not considering divesting from this corrupt corporation. Which really does beg the question: just how vile and criminal does a business have to be before the NZSF will refuse to taint our money with it?

Unfortunately, the NZSF refuses to say (though looking at their existing investments - tobacco companies, gambling, arms dealers, Halliburton, oil companies with poor human rights records, oh, and companies which support genocide in Sudan - you have to wonder whether they have any restrictions at all, or whether it's just "fuck the morals, does it make any money"). The good news, apparently, is that they're working on it, and will have some guidelines by the end of the year. The sooner the better, IMHO.

Blinding the watchdog

In December, British Prime Minister Tony Blair forced his attorney-general to pull the plug on a Serious Fraud Office investigation of massive corruption by giant British arms dealer BAE. The SFO turned around and opened a second case against BAE, this time over payments made as part of an arms deal with Tanzania. Blair's answer to this troublesome watchdog which keeps investigating his friends? Disestablish them!

The move is breathtaking in its arrogance and its sheer lack of shame; not even Kenya (a country where official corruption is entrenched in the political system, and where politicians routinely impede attempts to investigate them) has dared take such a move. What next? Will he also disestablish the London Metropolitan Police Department for investigating his sale of peerages, or the Electoral Commission for investigating his party's failure to declare loans which were always intended to be donations?

But I guess in Blair's Britain nothing should be allowed to stop big companies from making money. Not even the law.

The UK's flexible Attorney-General

More details are emerging of UK Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith's outrageous decision just before Christmas to pull the plug on an investigation into massive corruption by arms-dealer BAE. It seems that Goldsmith believed there was enough evidence to bring a case - but changed his mind after pressure from Downing Street:

In emergency meetings before Christmas, Lord Goldsmith initially agreed with lawyers and prosecutors that the Serious Fraud Office could bring charges against the former head of BAE Sir Dick Evans.

The allegations involved backdoor gifts to the then head of the Saudi air force, Prince Turki-bin-Nasser.

Having reviewed the SFO's files, Lord Goldsmith agreed that BAE could, in effect, be offered a plea bargain in which investigators would drop further potentially politically embarrassing inquiries if the company agreed to plead guilty to these relatively minor charges.

But within 48 hours the agreement was countermanded after decisions taken in Downing St, Whitehall sources said.

The director of the SFO, Robert Wardle, was forbidden to make the approach to BAE. Instead the attorney general told parliament the entire Saudi investigation was to be halted, and that there was insufficient evidence for it to succeed.

As Anthony Lester points out, this is not the first time Goldsmith has proven to be "flexible" about the law when pressured by Blair - there's also his famous change of heart over the legality of the Iraq war, which again was kept from Parliament. Once may just be bad judgement, but twice is a pattern - and a deeply troubling one. The Attorney-General is supposed to be independent in their decision making, but Goldsmith has clearly made decisions on political grounds, and shaped his arguments to suit what the Prime Minister wanted to hear rather than providing independent legal advice. That is bad enough, but it is worse when you remember that Blair and senior Labour figures are currently under investigation in the cash for peerages scandal - and that it is Goldsmith who will be making the final decision as to whether to prosecute them. Given his past behaviour, can the British public really have any faith that he will apply the law impartially to his colleagues? Or that a declaration that there is "insufficient evidence" is not just another case of a compromised Attorney-General bowing to political expediency? I don't think so.

Will Blair kill this investigation too?

Last month, Tony Blair pulled the plug on a Serious Fraud Office inquiry into corruption by Britain's biggest arms exporter, BAE, on spurious grounds of "national security". Now the SFO has BAE in its sights again, this time over payments made as part of an arms deal with Tanzania. Again, the charges are very serious, and could see BAE executives in jail. So, how long do you think it will take for Blair to kill this investigation into his buddies in the arms industry as well?

Meanwhile, it turns out that the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, lied to the House of Lords when justifying the decision to terminate the earlier investigation:

The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, told parliament before Christmas that the intelligence agencies "agreed with the assessment" of Tony Blair that national security was in jeopardy because the Saudis intended to pull out of intelligence cooperation with Britain. But John Scarlett, the head of MI6, has now refused to sign up to a government dossier which says MI6 endorses this view.

Whitehall sources have told the Guardian that the statement to the Lords was incorrect. MI6 and MI5 possessed no intelligence that the Saudis intended to sever security links. The intelligence agencies had been merely asked whether it would be damaging to UK national security if such a breach did happen. They replied that naturally it would.

This was a clear attempt to blame the intelligence agencies for a political decision made in Downing Street - and I'm glad that they're refusing to carry the can. If politicians want to support corrupt practices in the name of "protecting British jobs" in an industry we would all be better off without, they should do so openly so they can be judged on it by the electorate, rather than seekign to pass the buck onto others.

Dirtier and dirtier

The story of the UK's turning a blind eye to corruption by pulling the plug on an investigation into massive corruption by BAE in arms deals with Saudi Arabia is getting dirtier and dirtier, with the Independent reporting that despite efforts to dump the blame on the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office, the pressure to kill the investigation came from Downing Street. This is a clear case of political interference by a Prime Minister in a criminal investigation - anathema in a democracy which supposedly respects the rule of law. But it gets worse - much worse:

One senior figure who had been helping the SFO said the investigation's security had been repeatedly compromised. "I was told by detectives that the probe was being bugged. They had reached this conclusion because highly confidential information on the inquiry had been reaching outside parties."

Of course, any inquiry into this would also likely be killed by Blair to protect his mates - that is if it wasn't the British intelligence services doing it in the first place.

Meanwhile, there are also concerns that the British government's actions have violated international law - specifically the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. Blair's excuse for killing the investigation was "national security". But Article 5 of the Convention, to which the UK is a signatory and which is incorporated into British law, states:

Investigation and prosecution of the bribery of a foreign public official shall be subject to the applicable rules and principles of each Party. They shall not be influenced by considerations of national economic interest, the potential effect upon relations with another State or the identity of the natural or legal persons involved.

(Emphasis added)

Several NGOs are reportedly planning to mount a judicial review on these grounds, and the British government is also likely to be called to account before the OECD's anti-bribery working party next month. Hopefully this will force them to restart the investigation, and uphold the rule of law rather than the privilege of the rich and powerful.

Turning a blind eye to corruption

For the past two years, the UK's Serious Fraud Office has been investigating allegations that BAE paid the Saudi royal family hundreds of millions of pounds in bribes to secure a multi-billion pound arms deal in the 80's. Today, the UK's Attorney-General pulled the plug. His reason?

It has been necessary to balance the need to maintain the rule of law against the wider public interest. No weight has been given to commercial interests or to the national economic interest.

And if you believe that, I have a lovely batch of Eurofighter Typhoons to sell you. But it gets worse:

The prime minister and the foreign and defence secretaries have expressed the clear view that continuation of the investigation would cause serious damage to UK/Saudi security, intelligence and diplomatic cooperation, which is likely to have seriously negative consequences for the UK public interest in terms of both national security and our highest priority foreign policy objectives in the Middle East.

Or, to put it another way, the Saudi kleptocrats who could have their funds cut off if the case proceeded threatened to withdraw cooperation in the "war on terror" unless the British government allowed a British corporation to piss all over British law and engage in corrupt and illegal practices. And the Blair government gave in, nakedly interfering to kill a criminal probe (in violation of clear constitutional convention) in order to appease its allies and guarantee the dividends of BAE's wealthy shareholders. Kindof shows you what both parties really care about, doesn't it?