A defence company that makes sonar for the Royal Navy and missiles supplied by Britain to Ukraine is being investigated over “serious allegations” of bribery and corruption.
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) on Thursday announced an investigation into France’s Thales, which is one of the Government’s key defence contractors and employs more than 7,000 UK staff.
Frog defence company paying bribes? Now wouldn’t that be just so unusual and surprising?
I thought bribery and corruption was the standard MO for all defence companies in most parts of the world.
Perhaps the Oz government should investigate Thales Australia to see what it’s getting up to here.
But maybe they already know!!
AtC: Defence (and other) companies are between a rock and a hard place trying to do business in 3rd and not-so-3rd world countries. You don’t want bribery & corruption to spread in the West (though that’s increasingly hard to control), but it’s SOP elsewhere and Western moralising isn’t going to stop it.
As it’s Thales, don’t rule out the possibility of incompetence.
A few years ago I had a contract with a non-defence part of Thales UK. The incompetence of the senior management was astonishing. Just as one example of many, a visit to the office I was in from one of them one day included the throwaway line that they were about to close another site and sack everyone, “but please don’t mention it to anyone there, we haven’t told them yet!”
Thales were part of the consortium building the QE-class aircraft carriers. I’m amazed they actually float.
They’ll stop floating as soon as they go to war. All warships are now either submarines or mere targets.
@TG
One should learn lessons from this peeps. It’s better to live in a country where you can afford the police.
AtC,
I thought bribery and corruption was the standard MO for all defence companies in most parts of the world.
Indeed, so it must have been quite an egregious case.
It was even legal for Germans to bribe foreigners and Siemens was well known for it, as a quick search will reveal.
You don’t want bribery & corruption to spread in the West (though that’s increasingly hard to control), but it’s SOP elsewhere and Western moralising isn’t going to stop it.
But is that the optimum solution? If it gets things done it gets things done. Britain used to be riddled with bribery & corruption. It put a fleet on the sea beat the French & Spanish at Trafalgar & an army in the field beat Napoleon’s on the Peninsular. Now you’ve a military couldn’t fight its way out of a wet paper bag.
It’s no secret here, if you want to build some houses you sweeten up someone in the town hall. So many houses have been built, there isn’t a water supply for them. Which is the country with the housing crisis?
In the UK it won’t (usually) be an envelope stuffed with used £20s, it’ll be a seat at the Opera/Wimbledon or “there may be a board vacancy coming up next year” (wink).
My squadron commander during my short stay on No6 FTS was later a key figure in the Al Yamamah series of arms deals as the BAE agent in Saudi Arabia.
As so often we can blame Blair for this and especialy the red bearded dwarf who used to be Foreign Sec.
Something else the Tories didnt abolish when they had the chance
If first world countries can agree to refuse to give bribes to foreign despots the rules can work. Arms companies, especially in the high end tech sector, are already tightly integrated on an international basis.
Bribery is a cost that is also a risk for the briber. It’s also a cost for the taxpayer in the customer country because the price is higher.
Maybe that country goes to Russia or China and buys slightly worse / knock off kit.
If the customer country buys 2nd world kit the 1st world countries can retaliate by limiting aid, denying visas for the wives of despots so they can’t shop in Harrods, etc.
Could this work? It seems to me to require a lot of trust and transparency, not a well known characteristic of honour among thieves.
BIS,
The problem is that the UK has replaced suitcases of fivers with a colossal procurement bureaucracy everywhere to prevent it that probably costs more.
And let’s be honest, there’s still plenty of bribery in politics. The unions aren’t giving Labour money for the fun of it. It’s so train drivers get bigger pay rises if they get into power. Or why the various consultancies employ would-be politicians before they become MPs.
I was never that bothered about MPs expenses, or these stories about Liz Truss spending a grand on a meal. Compared to HS2 or the Olympics, it’s spare change. £1600 for a duck house? That might cover a couple of days of Accenture blokes who worked on Connecting for Health.
‘theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/21/british-mining-executives-held-in-mali-released-after-160m-deal-to-settle-tax-dispute’
I suppose this was more blackmail than bribery but it certainly shows that paying wallops of dosh to third worlders is still alive, well and flourishing!!
@WB
It’s what I meant when I said, live in a country you can afford the police. As 2 Tier has recently demonstrated. The price in the UK is totally out of the reach of ordinary people & isn’t paid in folding stuff.