Further memoranda from the Campaign Against
Arms Trade
1. Further to our previous submission, we
would like to draw your attention to recently discovered additional
evidence in support of the statements at paragraphs 10-12. The
evidence is enclosed.
2. In summary, the evidence shows that Defence
Sales Organisation (DSO) employees attempted to bribe a Kuwaiti
Colonel and his colleagues in an effort to secure a sale of Chieftain
tanks. Although eventually the Ministry of Defence (MoD) decided
not to go ahead with this particular arrangement, the agent that
the MoD did eventually use, Abdullah Ali Reza, was suspected by
some involved in the transaction of using corrupt practices.
3. In the first document (A), a briefing
for the Prime Minister from the then Defence Secretary contains
enclosures which reveal that, in 1974, Frank Nurdin, the Sales
Director of Racal-BCC, had, with Bill Jones of DSO, promised 5%
of the contract price to a Lieutenant Colonel Fahad al Haggan
and his colleagues on the Kuwaiti Army Equipment Committee as
a reward for choosing the Chieftain tank. Two years elapsed before
the MoD decided, in the end, not to make such a pay-off. The briefing
paper clearly shows that, had the payments been made, they would
have been corrupt.
4. In the second document (B), the Treasury
Solicitor reports on a conversation with Bill Jones and his boss,
Ian McDonald. The account shows that Fahad told Bill Jones that
he wanted 1% of the contract price for himself, and 1% for each
of his four colleagues on the Army Equipment Committee. Sir Lester
Suffield, then Head of Defence Sales, "took the decision
to pay commission to Fahad". Fahad was verbally promised
the "commission" and that payment would be made via
Millbank Technical Services (MTS), a subsidiary of the Crown Agents,
which, at the time, was frequently used by the DSO to sell arms
on its behalf.
5. As the first document showed, although
the payment to Fahad was never made, arrangements were made to
pay a different agent, Abdullah Ali Reza. MTS held a document
"which appears to indicate that some of the proposed commission
to Ali Reza was for corrupt purposes". The document notes
that this contention was disputed. As the document states, Ali
Reza was paid a commission.
6. The third document (C), from Foreign
and Commonwealth Office (FCO) files, shows that MTS paid a bribe
in Iran (to a friend of Hoveyda, Prime Minister of Iran in the
1970s).
7. The documents referred to here and in
our previous submission do not suggest the MoD was habitually
associated with corruption in arms deals. But they do show that,
on occasion, MoD employees had, at the least, not carried out
their duties to the highest ethical standards. In addition the
evidence that some DSO employees appear to have believed that
payments made on Government-to-Government deals with Saudi Arabia
were of a questionable nature, throws some doubt on the MoD's
repeated insistence of the probity of its past conduct. In summary,
the MoD has failed to present the Committee with a balanced and
fair account of its past conduct in this controversial area.
January 2008
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