Saudis and Egypt among biggest markets for UK arms despite human rights breaches

Posted on June 24, 2014 0 Comments57

Britain’s biggest arms market last year was Saudi Arabia, with the government approving £1.6bn worth of exports, including “components for military equipment for initiating explosives”, “equipment for the production of machine guns”, “CS hand grenades”, “components for water cannons”, and “tear gas/ irritant ammunition”.

British officials also approved the export to Egypt of £51m worth of arms, including assault rifles, pistols and components for military vehicles and aircraft.

The Foreign Office lists Saudi Arabia as a “country of concern” not least for breaching the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture, to which Saudi Arabia acceded in 1997.

In Egypt, the Guardian reported on Monday, hundreds of “disappeared” Egyptians are being tortured and held beyond judicial oversight in a secret military prison.

Three journalists from al-Jazeera English were sentenced in Egypt on Monday to between seven and 10 years in jail on charges of aiding terrorists and endangering national security.

The arms sales figures are taken from government reports and collated by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT), which estimates that the UK last year approved arms deals worth £2bn to oppressive regimes.

CAAT’s Andrew Smith said: “When the UK sells weapons to oppressive governments then it is not just giving them military support, it also gives them political support and the UK’s explicit endorsement”.

The arms sales figures coincide with the publication of a remarkable book that exposes the trickery, humbug, buck-passing, and cover-ups, by successive British governments as they turned a blind eye, and even encouraged, the payment of bribes to secure British arms contracts, notably with Saudi Arabia, and Iran under the Shah.

Deception in High Places (Pluto Press) by Nicholas Gilby, who led a CAAT campaign to expose corruption in Britain’s arms deals with Saudi Arabia, also reveals how British ministers and officials desperately tried to water down tough international anti-bribery and corruption rules being pushed by the US, notably after the scandal involving Lockheed broke in the 1970s.

Gilby describes how the UK’s Ministry of Defence kept commissions secret from its own auditors. “Ministers had devised rules designed to avoid them getting mixed up in bribery while allowing it to continue”.

Officials argued that it was unfair if companies were prosecuted when those demanding the bribes were scot-free.

Gilby shows how Saudi princes were the recipients of tens of millions worth of “commissions”. As the huge, £43bn, al-Yamamah Tornado jets-for-oil contract was being negotiated, a British company, Travellers World, spent hundreds of thousands of pounds, paid for by BAE, manufacturers of the Tornado and other aircraft destined for Saudi Arabia, to prominent Saudis involved in the Al Yamamah project, and their families.

Saudi families received more than £60m in benefits and cash from BAE between 1989 and 2002, according to Gilby.

Much, much, more was spent.

The National Audit Office report on Al Yamamah remains secret, the only report by parliament’s financial watchdog still under wraps.

That details have emerged is thanks to Gilby’s success at the UK’s information tribunal and to secret documents he found, to what he describes as his great surprise, at the National Archives in Kew in 2006.

They revealed how the price of Tornado aircraft was inflated by £600m in the Al Yamamah deal. Their cost had been inflated by nearly a third in a deal with the then Saudi defence minister Prince Sultan.

The documents were hastily withdrawn by Whitehall officials who claimed their release at Kew had been “a mistake”. the Ministry of Defence described the Saudis as being “shocked” when the Guardian wrote a report on the documents.

The Saudi government subsequently persuaded the Blair government to stop a Serious Fruad Office inquiry into payments made in the Al-Yamamah deal, threatening to stop anti-terrorist cooperation with the UK if the investigation went ahead.

“Defence sales offer tempting opportunities for the unprincipled the world over”.

The comment, by a senior British diplomat, is quoted by the author at the end of this revealing book. Britain, he says, now has one of the strongest anti-bribery laws in the world. But, he adds, the changes “have been mainly caused by external pressures, rather than a real desire of British governments to stamp out corruption”.

And how much is evaded by the use of offshore funds and tax havens still remains to be seen.

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