There were no questions of the month for which the answer was not there
for the choosing
There seems to be some confusion
here. There are many societies in which everyday functions, services
and transactions are not adequately covered by formal legislation and
bureaucratic administrative protocol. The most common example is that
of a civil service running years or decades behind the day-to-day
realities that have been imposed on their society by international and
global activities beyond their control. There are European countries
where to get e,g, a driving license in less than month or three needs a
payment to the appropriate functionaries, simply because the
administrative staff are underpaid, under equipped and under numbered
and
therefore have to be financed by 'private enterprise' or, if you like
bribery, as the budget process and tax collection system is continually
defeated by the ingenuity of those who, contrary to all evidence, hold
that their money is their own and the state has no right to it. It is
possible to say in this case that the administration is 'corrupted',
and
the first thing to do is to recognise this. However, to repair the
corruption and keep the function operational may not be possible except
over time. The amounts paid are very small but involve a great many
people and may even have become embedded in a rigidly traditional
bureaucracy as an unorthodox form of efficiency payment on which it has
become dependent. I might be better to recognise the reality. In many
countries this is done as far as the client is concerned - we can get a
passport delivered quicker if we pay more. There is no direct
connection of a benefit to the individual functionary of course. That
is why it is not considered a bribe. So we can see that what people
object to is not bribery but that the bribe is not shared. Then there
are the lawyers - they don't care how corrupt or unfair anything is as
long as it is legal. Paying for sex is frowned on unless legalised by
marriage, for example. Others are concerned about visibility. Anything
kept private is for them secret, and anything secret must be corrupt.
You can no doubt see where I am going now. Let us put all these
concepts together and jump to the obvious case raised at this time, at
the other end of the scale, the commission paid to a Saudi Ambassador
in connection with the al Yamamah contract for aircraft and associated
services. It seems obvious that Saudi Arabia in 1985, and even today,
has a government based much more on tribal and family structures than
is the case in EU countries. That means that the financial structure
will follow these lines as well. It is hardly likely that this can be
changed overnight with any improvement for the population and any
attempt to interfere robustly with the structure is inadvisable. The
commission paid by BAe systems transfers, we are told. money paid by
the Saudi government to BAe into another account, controlled by their
US Ambassador. As such, it would appear that the only aim is to make
what could have been an overt payment a secret one. It is therefore
assumed that because it is secret it is illegal and corrupt and, to use
a simple word: wrong. It could, on the other hand, be purely pragmatic.
If on the one hand there is no established, orthodox, democratic
system within Saudi Arabia for controlling the very considerable amount
of money involved in the administration and employment of a large
number of people and services in connection with the al Yamamah project
over many years, yet on the other hand the Saudis were not happy to
leave the entire control over such things in the hands of BAe or the
MOD, the supplier of
the hardware, it would seem quite likely to me that arrangements would
be made to have funding to cover all sorts of contingencies and
preplanned expenses into a bank account under the control of a single,
senior Saudi diplomat, to be used as required in connection with the
project over the years. I have absolutely no idea if this is the case,
but at the time the al Yamamah contract was established there was
nothing illegal about paying commissions. If in this case the payment
was not kept secret from either the Saudi or the UK governments - it
seems to have been arranged with their approval - it is hardly
surprising that the Director of the Serious Fraud Office and the
Attorney
General and the Prime Minister have each come to the conclusion that
hauling BAe into court on the grounds of corruption is unlikely to
succeed. So I expect when the latest Panorama documentary is aired all
we will discover is this:
- Following the global realisation that oil had become the new
gold, Saudi Arabia had become very rich and very vulnerable.
- The UK being a country with very long established relations with
Saudi Arabia, a buyer of oil and a possible supplier of defence
systems, was a favoured supplier with whom a big defence contract would
be beneficial to both countries.
- A very large contingency fund to take care of huge unknowns
(Donald Rumsfeld's 'unknown unknowns') was built into the contract and
paid progressively by BAe into an external account under the control of
the Saudi US ambassador.
- Nothing 'corrupt' will be proven, not will it be shown that
bribery took place to distort the proper process of a contract to
satisfy the requirments of either party or the interests of their
countries.
- Pursuing this affair is likely to risk upsetting the latest
contract with Saudi Arabia and achieve nothing else.