http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/06/bandar_and_doj.html#moreBandar and DOJ
by emptywheel
The Guardian has more on the potential involvement of US Banks in the BAE bribery scandal involving Bandar Bush bin Sultan and (though he has not been implicated in the US) Margaret Thatcher's son.
The US department of justice is preparing to open a corruption investigation into the arms company BAE, the Guardian has learned. It would cover the alleged £1bn arms deal payments to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia.
Washington sources familiar with the thinking of senior officials at the justice department said yesterday it was "99% certain" that a criminal inquiry would be opened under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Such an investigation would have potentially seismic consequences for BAE, which is trying to take over US arms companies and make the Pentagon its biggest customer.
As I noted last week, the payments appear to have been laundered through Riggs Bank, which for a long time was controlled by Bush crony Joe Allbritton and his uncle Jonathan. Now add in the underlying pressure here--that BAE is attempting to expand its contracting in the US. You know--to the Pentagon, which has been such a model of transparency and fair competition of late. And the whole thing stinks.
There's one more important detail in yesterday's Guardian report. DOJ has tried to go after BAE bribery before.
There is a history of rancour between British officials and US prosecutors over BAE bribery allegations. Released documents show that the former FCPA prosecutor Peter Clark clashed with Sir Kevin Tebbit, former MoD permanent secretary, over the UK's refusal to pursue allegations of corruption in the Czech Republic and in Qatar.
In the Qatar case, £7m was discovered to have been paid by BAE to the foreign minister of the Middle East oil state, and deposited in offshore accounts in Jersey. One source said: "We said to Sir Kevin, 'There's a roomful of documents in Jersey indicating bribery'. But he told us he had got a letter sent after the event from the ruler of Qatar saying he had no objections to the payment. We didn't regard that as altering the legal situation."
It's not clear when this happened, though it appears that Peter Clark was Deputy Chief of the Fraud Section at DOJ from 1991 until (apparently) late 2004, when he left for private practice. But it appears that
DOJ has been watching BAE for some time--and that the connection to the US is what allows DOJ to go after BAE directly.Given how closely this ties to BushCo, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
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