Serious Fraud Office to seek bribery charges against BAE

Stacy Summary:  Let’s see if Gordo tries to thwart justice as Blair did.

The latest probe involves contracts BAE won from countries including Tanzania, the Czech Republic, Romania and South Africa. The company denies the allegations, but there have been rumours of negotiations with the authorities over a “plea bargain”.

A separate case concerning a deal with Saudi Arabia was dropped in 2007 on national security grounds, following the intervention of then-prime minister Tony Blair.

The final decision on whether to proceed would be taken by Attorney General Baroness Scotland.

Senior Lib Dem MP Sir Menzies Campbell said the potential implications were “serious, not just for BAE but for Britain’s defence capacity”.

78 thoughts on “Serious Fraud Office to seek bribery charges against BAE”

  1. alister

    The Shakedown State: The Mafia as Government in The Philippines [or the United Kingdom??]

    http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=692&username=[email protected]&password=9999&publish=Y

  3. alister

    also…though it discriminates to focus specifically on russia in particular …this makes for interesting reading when combined with max ..& stacy’;s ecnomic & social paradigms…..

    “the russian mafia and ‘civil society’” ch 14 of ‘civil society in the baltic sea region’ LOL note that it says to begin with the early 1990s ….

    http://books.google.com.au/books?id=uVTrtjxTRWgC&pg=PA160&lpg=PA160&dq=“mafia+as+government”&source=bl&ots=EFKoPiFQi8&sig=ZtL2HwlwxBi5FkpGBLgEd6V__g0&hl=en&ei=D4PESq-iC5SAswPXkKCiCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3#v=onepage&q=%22mafia%20as%20government%22&f=false

  7. Ptah

    BAE bank in the Caymens… no ?

    So we fine them (well, even that might be a little hopeful) – and bail out the structure which they leech from.

    I refer the right honourable readers to the angst I posted previously!

  8. mike

    IT TAKES THE PRESIDENT FIVE MINUTES TO END THESE WARS WHY DOES”T HE DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    What is the reason for these wars it is not helping the people at all screw oil END THE WARS TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

  9. Bill Stewart

    Imagine a world without small change – that’s what’s happened to Zimbabwe.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/business/2009/09/090930_zimbabwe_money.shtml

    The country’s mind-boggling rise in inflation, which officially reached 231 million percent last year, was halted this February when the government brought in a new system, where any currency can be used for any transaction.

    The Zimbabwe dollar more or less vanished from use, and the US dollar became the first choice currency.

    But the trouble is there are no US coins – quarters or dimes or cents – in the country, so the one dollar note is the smallest denomination, except for a few South African rand coins.

    That’s led to over-pricing of basic bread and butter commodities, lost business for street traders, and real inconvenience for consumers.

    The BBC’s Steve Vickers reports from Harare on life without the chink of change.

    First broadcast on World Business News.

  11. mike

    The Reason they won’t stop the wars is because it would hurt GDP people are dying how the F@#$ cares about GDP

  13. Mep

    @ Stacy – Sometimes I think that the purpose of the “justice may be coming” articles is to tamp down the seething anger across the globe by getting people’s hopes up about the possibility of crooks doing time for their crimes against humanity. There’s teasers, really.But like all things, their effectiveness will wear off over time.

  19. Youri Carma

    The World Bank group is set to launch a $5.5bn initiative to raise funds to buy distressed assets from banks in emerging and developing markets in a bid to clean up their balance sheets and free up credit flows.

    The move came as the International Monetary Fund warned on Wednesday that rising losses on loans were likely to strain bank balance sheets in emerging Europe “for years to come”, saying non-performing loan ratios could peak as high as double their current level.

    The idea is to mimic the functions of a “bad bank” at an international level through a number of platforms rather than a single global investment vehicle.

    “There is still as you know a lot of bad debt or non-performing loans on the balance sheets of various banks around the world, whether it is in eastern Europe or elsewhere,” he said. Mr Thunnel, a former chief executive of Secorum, the “bad bank” created by the Swedish government to manage distressed assets following the country’s banking crisis in the early 1990s, said the IFC was adopting a four-pronged approach.

    It plans to invest in service companies that manage distressed debt funds, team up with global banks to buy troubled assets, invest in some distressed debt funds and raise funds for its own asset management arm.

    The IMF said on Wednesday that despite the recent rally in emerging market assets, confidence has returned to Asian and Latin American economies much faster than to countries in central and eastern Europe, whose reliance on external bank financing makes them very vulnerable.

    “One particular concern in eastern Europe has to do with cross-border bank flows,” said José Viñals, the IMF’s head of monetary and capital markets, adding that reduced cross-border flows made it even more important to attract more portfolio investment.

    The IMF estimated that emerging economy companies and banks needed to meet or roll over debt service totalling $400bn in the next two years, with maturities concentrated on the end of 2009 and early 2010.

    The IFC will target distressed assets in both emerging markets and poorer developing countries. However, its working assumption is that asset purchases will work best in the more advanced emerging economies, while recapitalising banks will continue to be the main way to support banks in poor nations.

    From: World Bank to buy distressed assets http://bit.ly/19v15N

  23. Gerry

    @Stacy

    Just reading the preceding thread – “They can make me do anything, Ben, can’ they”? – did Mr. Kuryakin’s remarks about Polanski get removed? Suddenly everyone is going off at something I can’t even find there.

  26. stacyherbert Post author

    @Gerry – uh, that would be a big N-O; you’ll have to ask those who wrote the comments which of Ilya’s comments they were responding to

  27. mike

    On Iraq and Afghanistan you have 2 choices pull out or escalate. If we have a$$ pull out of Iraq we leave a hand full of our troops as sitting ducks nothing but a complete pull out is exceptable . In Afghanistan same thing. I DON’T THINK ESCALATION IS EXCEPTABLE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE I’m no genius on war strategy but this is just simply common sense

  32. Youri Carma

    Delinquencies in the Phoenix area on loans backed by office, industrial, retail and apartment properties have risen more than five-fold since March.

    From: Recession Rising Like Phoenix With Area Delinquencies Surging http://tinyurl.com/yaf893z

  33. dan valley

    there is just so much crap hitting the fan at once that one tends to miss the important kernels

  34. Mep

    Mike – We have 4,000 troops coming home soon from Iraq, and there are rumors that we may draw down sooner than expected. Will those 4,000 then go to Afghanistan? Maybe. Don’t know. I do know that a cousin of mine is being deployed to Iraq very soon, as is my former brother-in-law. So it looks like we’re just moving troops around. Afghanistan is a bust. Top officials have said that we need 600,000 troops there–that includes US, allied, and Afghans. That kind of a footprint is impractical and suicidal. We’re going to have to draw down or risk making the situation much, much worse.

    You obviously have war on the brain . . . why not send some thoughts here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

  36. dan valley

    follow the money…audit the fed and oppose the new international central bank….this is more important than health care or swine flu or the other bs ..

  39. Youri Carma

    DUTCH TULIPS
    (What I’ve been saying from the beginning of this crises! Again I was the first! Toot, toot. Bang, bang Peppi & Kokki)

    Consider tulip mania, which like all bubbles featured leverage; it was fueled not just by ordinary debt, but by leveraged tulip options. When the end came, the government of Holland declined to bail out those who had mortgaged their houses and businesses to buy tulip bulbs, and the multiyear depression that followed ruined an otherwise sound economy.

    Our recent real-estate bubble wasn’t like tulip mania, in which the inflated asset had only a tenuous connection to the economy it came to dominate. The real-estate bubble swelled on the genuine beliefs among consumers about their future prospects and earnings. To be sure, some of those prospects and earnings were exaggerated to the point of fraud.

    Thus the bubble burst when credit-card junkies had spent the last dollars they could justify, and the final peanut brain had been unearthed who could be persuaded to sign up for a negative-amortizing mortgage.

    Because this link, however slim, remained between people’s prospects and earnings and the debt they could carry, real- estate prices even in hard-hit cities such as Las Vegas declined only by half. Stock-market losses were similar. These numbers are reported as if they were staggering, but they are less so compared with many bubbles.

    From: Gold Tells You U.S. Bubble Hasn’t Popped Yet http://tinyurl.com/y9vhmhv

  40. Bill Stewart

    Aust population hits 22m

    http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/aust-population-hits-22m-3044203

    At precisely 4.02pm New Zealand time on Thursday Australia’s population will hit 22 million with the milestone addition likely to be a new immigrant passing through customs.

    Demographer Mark McCrindle says the country’s population is growing faster than official predictions and is now expected to reach 40 million in 2050.

    He says two thirds of the growth is from net immigration and the rest through natural increase.

    On top of all that, people are living longer.

    He says if major cities absorb all the growth the population boom won’t be sustainable, but the signs are that regional cities are benefiting from the growing pains.

    McCrindle says rural inland cities such as Ballarat, Bendigo, Albury Wodonga, Launceston and Toowoomba have passed the 100,000 population mark.

    “As they grow they become a magnet for more people,” he says.
    Advertisement

    “But we’ll still have to develop new cities to cope with the strain – in the last century the only new cities built were Canberra and the Gold Coast.”

    The baby boom, fanned by generous baby grants from the Howard and Rudd governments, resulted in a record 300,000 new births last year.

    “We’re on track to beat it this year,” McCrindle says.

  41. gonzomarx

    The Great Mineral Heist
    “Over the past 70 years the levels of crucial minerals in our basic foods have declined significantly. This is bad news for consumers in the west, but potentially deadly news for those in the developing world who cannot afford a perfectly balanced diet.”
    http://tinyurl.com/yahehod

  42. Youri Carma

    Well Maybe Max m,entioned it first in his docu but didn’t mention it as THE SOLUTION, I did.

  44. frances snoot

    @Youri:
    Don’t you find it odd that Bloomberg is pushing gold now?

    “The Treasury will succeed in printing enough money to forestall severe deflation.”
    Why no mention of the Federal Reserve here?

    If she is calling for currency devalution, how does she expect that gold will retain value? Gold is priced in dollars.

  45. Phil

    @frances snoot …” If she is calling for currency devaluation, how does she expect that gold will retain value? Gold is priced in dollars.”

    Huh ? … Obvious isn’t it ?
    It will retain value .. nothing more !

  48. Dedo

    @Bill Stewart,…

    Cities are just centralised experimental control mechanisms that perpetuate interdependence, a
    microcosm of this global agenda. It’s a degenerate paradigm to take away personal liberty and
    independence.
    Over population is being falsified because of technological unemployment (The human “capital”
    is no longer needed),..end of report.

  49. Youri Carma

    @frances snoot

    Donnow? She’s a quest blog writer sort of. Maybe Bloomberg begins to realize it has no use protecting the NWO cause they will be victims too?

    We all know that the dollar decline is a way for the FED to inflate themselves out of debt. They just want to do it gradually so the Chinese have time to diverse away althogh they are still buying but not as much. Japan won’t be able to buy anymore so that could give the dollar an extra push down. Than we have the dollar carry trade which, acording to Jim Willie, will be the dollars coffin.

    A dollar devaluation is just getting ahead of the decline and only will be done if they can’t trick the system otherwise. This will not be done lightly. If the dollar is devaluated “by force” so to speak it just means that Gold will get even more expensive for Americans, it will hike shortly after I think.

  51. Freemarkets

    I do not think that this BAE case will proceed. Baroness Scotlands job is held on a thread after her recent brush with her own law. The case will be appealed to the house of lords or the new court which replaces it and will be brushed under the carpet. The winners will be the big law firms who fleece the tax payer for massive fees!

  53. Mep

    @ Gonzomarx – I watched “The Gleaners and I” a couple of nights ago, and was surprised to see that the poor in France appear to be in better health than most non-poor Americans. At least that’s what the film implies. It shows people picking up and eating discarded fruits and veggies, and even dumpster-diving for meats and bread. A lot of them claimed that they never got sick eating that way. Most of them appear to have above-average intelligence, too! That’s quite a tangent from your comment . . . but one of the points the film was trying to make is that there is more than enough food to feed people. We just have a nasty habit of wasting it and preventing others from having access to it.

  54. Phil

    @stacyherbert … “Danny – please, please, please don’t do it”

    Grinner coming back ? ….
    Holy …. Sh*t ! No No No …. it just can’t be true !
    All these Coincidence Theories proven right .. I mean !
    ;-)

  60. stacyherbert Post author

    @Mep – gulp, I wouldn’t do that; just tell him to “get a real job” . . . if he’s such a freemarket fundamentalist, tell him to go try and work in the private sector, not in all these government jobs like jpmorgan, ‘middle east envoy’ and EU . . . blah blah blah . . . talk talk talk

  67. Mep

    @ Stacy – USA! USA! USA! Let’s hope that we know where the non-IAEA-inspected Pakistani nuclear facilities are, and that the jackasses sitting in Washington remotely-controlling the drones don’t blow them up.

  69. Youri Carma

    If the US does an airstrikes in Quetta it only will make the Taliban stronger as it has become stronger when the Americans entered the Arena. Mindless bombing causing a lot of civilian causalties caused that.

    But this is exactly what the satanisic army leaders want. Expand the war so they can sell more weapons. Just can’t believe that so many Americans enlist the army? Everybody knew from the beginning what war in Afghanistan means. You don’t have to be a ZunTsu expert for that just look at history.

    Oh yeah I forgot Americans know now history but at least they could have listened to others. So the one that doesn’t want to listen has to feel it.

    Order out of chaos explained by Zorg for dummies: http://tinyurl.com/6caycu

  70. Mep

    @ Youri – “Just can’t believe that so many Americans enlist the army?” The majority of the people I know enlisted b/c they didn’t think they had any other option. Besides seeking opportunities, our troops are actually patriotic . . . just maybe a little bit too naive to realize that our politicians exploit their patriotism in order to use them as pawns.

  71. frances snoot

    “In all the talk of inflation because the Treasury is printing so much money versus deflation because it may not print enough, there is one type of inflation that is rarely discussed. This is the mega-inflation caused by a sudden currency devaluation. Currency is like any financial innovation, an obligation secured by assets. When the obligation is perceived to have increased far beyond the level justifiable by the assets, which in this case make up a country’s economy, a bubble has formed.”

    Phil: your thesis might be reflected in another country with a mega-currency devaluation. But the dollar is the reserve currency. As such the commodity index is priced in dollars: valuation is dependent on dollar value. She is not indicating a dollar devaluation caused by hyperinflationary forces but a crash in the value of the dollar itself. Wouldn’t this create an effect on the valuation of gold in dollar units?

    As I see it: valuation is pegged to the dollar and the other currencies and dollar flutuate within the system of play called fiat exchange. The article says:
    “Currency is like any financial innovation, an obligation secured by assets.”

    What does she mean here? Is she talking about a default on the good faith of the US government in paying it’s obligations? Is she indicating a deflationary spiral in asset prices? How is currency pegged to assets?

  72. frances snoot

    @Youri:
    If the dollar is devalued by a mega-currency drop like she says then we all go swim in the sewer together.

    “Currency is like any financial innovation, an obligation secured by assets. When the obligation is perceived to have increased far beyond the level justifiable by the assets, which in this case make up a country’s economy, a bubble has formed.”

    Unfortunately, the bubble is in her brain. She is not talking sense. The bubbles were formed through easy access to money in the Greenspan years, by deregulation and fraud. Currency derives no obligation from assets: gold is not a currency.

  73. frances snoot

    @Mep:
    Duncan’s policies at the DOH under Obama are to set up military charter schools in poor, disadvantaged areas to feed the grist.

  74. frances snoot

    “Might as well stock up, they say, before gold becomes a controlled substance.”

    Could Bloomberg be more blatant without saying, “Buy gold”?

  75. Phil

    @frances … Gold & “How is currency pegged to assets?”

    You may have seen that inverted pyramid in the ZH article posted a while ago. Gold was at the bottom – i.e. the basis – everything else on top is effectively “paper”.

    The problem is that the FED / Banskter/ Govt. have abused the “paper” system such that everything above the Gold “basis” is quite rightly put to question .
    When the pyramid crumbles, the asset of last resort is of course Gold.
    i.e. “paper” valuations in any currency mean ZILCH – back to basics = Gold.

    The fact that the FED refuses to admit that it manipulates the Gold price ( although they have indirectly admitted it many times ) says basically everything.
    Secondly, all banks know the importance of Gold … and that will NEVER change .
    They keep “Gold data” in their “currency databases” .. where it belongs !
    … and NOT in the stocks, commodities or derivative databases.

    That ALSO tells you everything about Gold.
    FWIW

  77. frances snoot

    Gold is buried. Beneath a mountain of disinfo.

    How could gold be undergirding anything when the currencies are all fiat, not based on gold at all, and the gold is priced in dollars? Gold is no different than any other commodity: it is useful for speculation.

    Are you referring to the perception of gold as value? Where did that chart come from???

    There are two ways to look at this. If you want to believe that gold is a currency, then the move away from tangible currency will destroy gold’s efficiency in that realm. If you believe that gold undergirds currency valuation (as the chart suggests…but that stupid upside down triangle only illustrates the gold standard applied to paper money) then gold will be devalued when the dollar is devalued.

    But I do not hold to either fairy tale.

    The powers to be have controlled the world nicely for eons through the ownership of currency and now they have other ways they plan to maintain control.

  78. Mike King

    @All… I have never submitted the pertinent information that I research to Max K site but this one I must take the time. I suggest you are sitting down when reading the following.
    THIS IS THE TYPE OF PERTINENT INFORMATION THAT IS RELLEVANT TO THIS CURRENT CRISIS AND FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANY MAIN STREAM MEDIA INFO ON THE TOPIC. IT CENTERS ON PURPOSE !
    You are about to read some of the most important, truthful, accurate, pertinent information about the Health Care Bill superseding all the bullshit media info on the topic.
    Subject: Constitutional Law Instr. views on HB 3200l

    This following are the comments from to person who sent me this email: “I received this email this morning and since there are so many emails concerning the HR3200 Health Care Bill going around I have the habit of analyzing each to understand and prove their source. Since this one is signed by the author I decided first to see if there was in fact a Michael Connelly, Atty living in Carrollton , Tx. There is, he is listed in http://www.whitepages.com as Michael R. Connelly, Atty living at 3560 County Square Drive, Carrollton Tx and his phone number is 214-731-6280. I just got off the phone with him and he is for real. Please check out his webpage, http:michaelconnelly.viviti.com . Mr. Connelly is an attorney and a author. His email is [email protected]. Check it out.”

    From Michael Connelly – Retired attorney, Constitutional Law Instructor, Carrollton, Texas

    Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House
    Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied
    it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional
    law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were
    being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.

    To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its
    implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the
    media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care,
    particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are
    involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion
    services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members
    of the medical profession.

    The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out
    of business and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats and most of them will not be health care professionals.
    Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of
    necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled.
    However, as scary as all of that it, it just scratches the surface.
    In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention
    of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a
    convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the
    Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been
    contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions
    of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been
    destroyed.

    The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of
    power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the
    U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama
    Administration authority in a number of different areas over the
    lives of the American people and the businesses they own. The irony is
    that the Congress doesn’t have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with. I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S.
    Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of
    Congress to regulate health care.

    This legislation also provides for access by the appointees of the
    Obama administration of all of your personal healthcare information,
    your personal financial information, and the information of your
    employer, physician, and hospital. All of this is a direct violation
    of the specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the
    Constitution protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures.
    You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been
    legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3rd and
    4th Amendments may provide.

    If you decide not to have healthcare insurance or if you have private
    insurance that is not deemed “acceptable” to the “Health Choices
    Administrator” appointed by Obama there will be a tax imposed on you.
    It is called a “tax” instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid
    application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment.
    However, that doesn’t work because since there is nothing in the law
    that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax, it is
    definitely depriving someone of property without the “due process of
    law.

    So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate
    so much out the original ten in the Bill of Rights that are
    effectively nullified by this law. It doesn’t stop there though. The
    9th Amendment that provides: “The enumeration in the
    Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or
    disparage others retained by the people;” The 10th
    Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by
    the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved
    to the States respectively, or to the people.” Under the provisions of
    this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the
    states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas
    that once were theirs to control.

    I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you
    get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing
    power and limiting rights. Article 6 of the Constitution requires the
    members of both houses of Congress to “be bound by oath or
    affirmation” to support the Constitution. If I was a member of
    Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything
    like it without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or
    affirmation. If I voted for it anyway I would hope the American
    people would hold me accountable.

    For those who might doubt the nature of this threat I suggest they
    consult the source.

    Here is a link to the Constitution:

    http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

    And another to the Bill of Rights:

    http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html

    There you can see exactly what we are about to have taken from us.

    Michael Connelly
    Retired attorney,
    Constitutional Law Instructor
    Carrollton, Texas

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