February 14, 2008 (LPAC)--The British High Court began conducting a judicial review today of the British government's closing down of the Serious Fraud Office's (SFO) investigation into BAE Systems' alleged corruption, involving payoffs of billions of dollars to Saudi Prince Bandar. This is part of an effort by two campaign groups--the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Corner House--to request that the court quash the SFO's decision to close down the investigation, according to a report in the Lancashire Evening Post.

Last year, statesman Lyndon LaRouche labeled the BAE bribery and oil-for-weapons barter deal "the scandal of the century." The British court case is one of three involving BAE, two of them in the United States. The long-running SFO investigation was related to the so-called Al-Yamamah contract for BAE aircraft, which was signed in 1985. In December of 2007, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered SFO director general Robert Wardle to drop the investigation, invoking British national security concerns.

Appearing for Corner House Research, which campaigns against corruption in international trade, and the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), attorney Dinah Rose told the court that former Prime Minister Tony Blair had wrongly interfered in a legal matter following threats by the Saudis. Rose said SFO director Robert Wardle put out a press statement on December 14, 2006, saying the decision had been made following representations to him by then-Attorney General Lord Goldsmith that the move was necessary "to safeguard national and international security".

But Rose argued the real reason for dropping the investigation "was not national security but the commercial situation," charging that the decision violated the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. The decision, she said, was based on "tainted advice" and was unlawful because the Director had permitted threats, or blackmail, to influence his decision. She told Lord Justice Moses, sitting with Mr. Justice Sullivan at London's High Court, "these threats were apparently made following BAE's discovery that the SFO was about to obtain access to details of various Swiss bank accounts."

It was widely reported that the threats came from Prince Bandar and his agents, who were under investigation by the SFO, who visited London and met with Foreign Office officials on December 5, 2006. It is noteworthy that U.S. Vice President Cheney was in Saudi Arabia just previously, in November.

Pointing to this obvious pressure being brought to bear by Blair, Rose told the court: "We see mounting pressure on the AG and the SFO..." The Prime Minister, she said, had "stepped over the boundary between what is a permissible exercise and impermissible attempts to influence or dictate a decision on the investigation by expressing his view. This is the clearest case of intervention that goes too far."