BAE Sys­tems, the com­pa­ny hired by the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion to sup­ply Off­shore Pa­trol Ves­sels (OPVs) to Trinidad and To­ba­go, has been im­pli­cat­ed in a bribery scan­dal in the Unit­ed King­dom. The Tele­graph re­port­ed yes­ter­day that years of bribery in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to BAE Sys­tems by Britain's Se­ri­ous Fraud Of­fice were brought to a close when the com­pa­ny was fined af­ter plead­ing guilty to fail­ing to keep prop­er ac­count­ing records in Tan­za­nia.

A judge at South­wark Crown Court has sug­gest­ed that part of a se­cret £7.7m pay­ment made by BAE Sys­tems to a busi­ness­man in Tan­za­nia was a bribe to help se­cure a radar con­tract. Jus­tice Bean said the "ob­vi­ous in­fer­ence" was that "part of the mon­ey was used to bribe de­ci­sion-mak­ers" in Tan­za­nia. BAE has ad­mit­ted pay­ing the mon­ey to its agent, Sailesh Vith­lani, for his part in se­cur­ing the £28 mil­lion con­tract. How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny de­nies any cor­rup­tion.

BAE al­so con­ced­ed that most of the mon­ey paid to Vith­lani was fun­nelled through a se­cre­tive com­pa­ny it set up in the British Vir­gin Is­lands. It al­so ad­mit­ted that it did not keep prop­er ac­counts of the trans­ac­tions, which it dis­guised as "pay­ments for tech­ni­cal ser­vices." How­ev­er, the judge said the arrange­ments meant the com­pa­ny "would have no fin­ger­prints on the mon­ey." He added: "They didn't want to know how much was paid and to whom." He de­scribed BAE's be­hav­iour as "hear no evil, speak no evil."

The com­pa­ny is in court for sen­tenc­ing over its be­hav­iour. It has al­ready agreed to a deal with the Se­ri­ous Fraud Of­fice, un­der which it of­fered to make an ex-gra­tia pay­ment of up to £30 mil­lion to Tan­za­nia, and ad­mit­ted fail­ing to keep ac­cu­rate records of the pay­ments to Vith­lani. Ac­cord­ing to the Tele­graph, this was the time­line of in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the com­pa­ny:

1985: Britain signs the Al Ya­mamah arms-for-oil deal with Sau­di Ara­bia, the biggest ex­port con­tract in UK his­to­ry. The agree­ment was Gov­ern­ment to Gov­ern­ment, but BAE Sys­tems (then British Aero­space) was the prime con­trac­tor be­cause the deal in­clud­ed the sale of 120 Tor­na­do fight­er jets, Hawk train­er planes and oth­er de­fence kit.

1989: A UK news­pa­per first re­ports that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way in­to claims huge pay­ments were made to BAE agents as com­mis­sion, by in­flat­ing the sale price of the Tor­na­dos in the Al Ya­mamah deal.

2000: BAE first failed to ac­cu­rate­ly ac­count for pay­ments made to its Tan­zan­ian agent, Shailesh Vith­lani, a process which went on un­til 2005.

2004: The Se­ri­ous Fraud Of­fice starts an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to sus­pect­ed ac­count­ing ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties re­lat­ed to BAE and the Al Ya­mamah deal, fo­cus­ing on the re­la­tion­ship be­tween BAE and two small trav­el firms which made arrange­ments for Sau­di of­fi­cials on be­half of BAE. 2006: In No­vem­ber, BE con­firms the SFO and Min­istry of De­fence are prob­ing al­le­ga­tions that BAE paid "back­han­ders" to the Tan­zan­ian gov­ern­ment for a US$40 mil­lion (£28 mil­lion) mil­i­tary radar sys­tem.

In April 2007, the for­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment en­tered in­to a US$234 mil­lion agree­ment with the UK's VT Group to de­liv­er three 90m OPVs.Own­er­ship of the pro­gramme passed first to BVT Sur­face Fleet, a joint ven­ture ship­build­ing com­pa­ny cre­at­ed in mid-2008 by BAE Sys­tems and VT Group and sub­se­quent­ly to BAE Sys­tems Sur­face Ships when BAE Sys­tems ac­quired sole own­er­ship of the ven­ture in Sep­tem­ber 2009. There had been sev­er­al cost and time over­runs on the project and last Sep­tem­ber the new Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment served no­tice that it would ter­mi­nate the con­tract.

At that time, ac­cord­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, $61 mil­lion was over­due and payable by BAE to the T&T Gov­ern­ment. The no­tice of can­cel­la­tion was served on Sep­tem­ber 17, and there was a 30-day no­tice pe­ri­od be­fore it be­came ef­fec­tive.Af­ter the can­cel­la­tion no­tice took ef­fect, Gov­ern­ment was en­ti­tled to a full re­fund of monies paid to BAE for the un­de­liv­ered ves­sels. When the con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed, the first of the three OPVs, Port-of-Spain, was go­ing through fi­nal work be­fore ac­cep­tance by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard. The sec­ond, Scar­bor­ough, has com­plet­ed sea tri­als with an an­tic­i­pat­ed Oc­to­ber 2010 de­liv­ery date and work was con­tin­u­ing on the third, San Fer­nan­do, with sea tri­als sched­uled for last month.