Businesses just sell stuff that people want to buy. And that includes BAe making and selling military systems.

What are the rules governing export licensing? Do they have a moral slant to prevent, for example, selling military air traffic systems to impoverished countries buying them with aid money?

Are "sweeteners" just part of the business, or are they illegal bribes?

Well, they're definitely illegal bribes. Whether morality and legality has any credible aspect when it comes to selling arms is a difficult area though 🙂

FFS it's just business. In some countries that's the way it works, it's only a problem if you decide it is.

We have decided it is a problem, and we are right to do so.

If a British government official spent, say, 5% of the government's budget on buying a single virtually useless asset from a Chinese company, we'd be peeved. If you then discovered that he'd been paid £1million in cash to an offshore bank account at the same time by the Chinese company we'd be apoplectic.

If one of the results of buying the useless asset was that people carried on going to open air schools under trees because someone had spent our money so that he could get a massive bribe we would wonder why this was allowed to happen.

🙂

As far as I'm concerned, this is a separate issue to the morality of selling machinery of death to murderous berks, incidentally. We do better things. But tolerating people doing procurement routinely stealing from their countries to get bungs for themselves from companies that we can control doesn't need to happen. We are a major donor of international aid, and a major supplier of particularly deadly weaponry. We can get the death business without undermining good governance and working against sane development goals.

Last week someone with a lot of influence got Baroness Scotland out of a hole, this week she will likely return the favour.

BAe Systems are the biggest manufacturer in the UK they are also one of the biggest employers. They sell WMDs anti personnel weapons and various other implements of destruction. Should we really be up in arms (sorry) about a few bribes? Surely morality is the real issue here or the lack of it.

I'm quite proud of the SFO for this stance. We shouldn't tolerate British businesses behaving in a corrupt way. We'll have to accept that may hurt our bottom line, employment and exports though – not sure Russia, China or even/especially France have the same qualms.

BAe Systems are the biggest manufacturer in the UK they are also one of the biggest employers.

I understand there as many people employed in Kebab shops as there are in the UK Arms Industry. We could export Kebabs

I understand there as many people employed in Kebab shops as there are in the UK Arms Industry. We could export Kebabs

Cooked the usual way they could probably kill people just as effectively as some weapons 😆

We could export Kebabs

Love it 😉

Selling sand kebabs to the Arabs!!

I quite understand and sympathise with your view BD, but differences between the UAE and UK in the ways of doing business exist and any company ignoring them (or not adhering to them) will not secure the deal. It is part of the 'rules of trade' in certain countries around the world, whether overt or covert. We would be naive to think otherwise, and I think Johnners summed the situation up nicely with his view that other countries wouldn't think twice.

Your point about schools under trees etc is rather moot in my opinion as the regime looking to buy such hardware would have already ear-marked the billions of (whatever currency) for their 'defence' budget, regardless of who wins the contract at the end. (As an aside, in the case of UAE and the Al Yamamah deal, there is very little poverty indeed meaning little or no missed opportunity to build schools etc)

I think these rules apply whatever you're selling, it just so happens that in this example it is defence equipment that gets folk's backs up in the first place.

(All meant in the spirit of debate :-))

If a British procurement agent took a sweetner/bribe to buy stuff, it's fraud here – quite right. Some countries we call allies are happy to allow procurement agents to take sweetners; it's not fraud there. I'm not really concerned and think the SFO should back off.

But I understand that BAe tried to sell an unsuitable military air traffic system to very poor Tanzania which was likely being paid for by development funds. I cannot understand why the UK govt would sign off an export licence for that. Apparently Tony approved it.