CAAT - BAE Systems

Issues

What BAE does
BAE Systems is one of the world's largest arms producers. It makes fighter aircraft, warships, tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery systems, missiles, munitions and much more.

BAE's arms are sold indiscriminately around the world. The company has military customers in over 100 countries and around 95% of its sales are military. Its focus over the past few years has been on increasing sales to the US, specifically targeting equipment for the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and supplying Eurofighters and other arms to the Saudi Arabia regime.

BAE routinely supplies countries the UK Foreign Office Human Rights report considers as having "the most serious wide-ranging human rights concerns."

Corruption Investigations
In 2004, following compelling evidence in the media, the UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) began investigating BAE deals with countries including Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tanzania and the Czech Republic. However, in 2006 Tony Blair quashed the SFO investigation into BAE's multi-billion pound – and corruption-riddled – deals with Saudi Arabia, one of the world's most authoritarian regimes. A US Department of Justice (DoJ) investigation into multiple deals including those with Saudi Arabia, continued.

In early 2010, the DoJ agreed a plea bargain with BAE. The company was sentenced "to pay a $400 million criminal fine, one of the largest criminal fines in the history of DOJ's ongoing effort to combat overseas corruption in international business and enforce U.S. export control laws." This covered corruption on arms deals with Saudi Arabia, the Czech Republic and Hungary, although BAE only had to admit to making false statements in regulatory filings.

The SFO was left with, as Private Eye referred to it, "the crumbs of a £30m settlement over BAE's corrupt Tanzanian radar system contract." In this instance, BAE only had to admit to false accounting. More information on the investigations and plea bargains, including links to relevant documents is available here.

A 'UK' company?
BAE is now an international company with five "home markets". The largest of these is the US, followed by the UK. The others are Australia, India and Saudi Arabia. BAE's 2010 Annual Report states that it continues to look for further home markets, focusing on South America and Asia.