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Posted by mach1231
at 5:43 PM PST
Updated: Sunday, January 28, 2007 6:03 PM PST
quizzicalBAE Systems, the weapons maker, faces a court challenge from anti-arms trade campaigners who want to know how private documents belonging to them ended up in the company's hands.
The Campaign Against Arms Trade wants to force BAE to reveal the source of the documents, which relate to a legal challenge the campaigners are mounting to the Serious Fraud Office's decision to end an investigation into alleged bribery by the company in Saudi Arabia.
The row over the documents, which BAE representatives returned voluntarily, is the latest twist in the controversy over the scrapping of the SFO investigation last month amid public lobbying by the company and Saudi anger.
The Campaign Against Arms Trade said it had successfully persuaded a judge to allow a High Court hearing next week over whether BAE should reveal how the "confidential and legally privileged material" arrived in the company's possession.
BAE declined to disclose what the documents were, or how it obtained them.
It said it would make no further comment ahead of the hearing, other than that no wrongdoing appeared to be alleged by the campaigners.
"CAAT has made an application simply to obtain certain information which they believe BAE may have," the company said. "This type of application is commonly used to obtain evidence from parties against whom no wrongdoing is alleged."
This is not the first time controversy has surrounded the relationship between the Campaign Against Arms Trade and BAE. In 2003, newspaper reports claimed the campaign's offices had been spied on and confidential information passed on to the company by third parties.
BAE declined to comment yesterday on those allegations, although it was quoted at the time as saying it would never encourage anyone to do anything illegal.
The campaign said it planned to go ahead with its court challenge to the scrapping of the Saudi investigation, although this would be put on hold until after the hearing over the documents.
The challenge, brought jointly with Corner House Research, an anti-corruption group, is likely to argue that the Serious Fraud Office's action breached an international anti-bribery convention to which Britain is a signatory.
The campaign and Corner House said a letter defending the decision sent to them late last week by the government's solicitors had not persuaded them the decision was lawful.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development convention forbids countries to take into account commercial considerations or relations with other states when deciding whether to investigate or prosecute bribery.
Last week, the OECD's 36-nation anti-bribery group said it had "serous concerns" Britain might have breached the convention.
The investigation was examining whether BAE had paid bribes to Saudi officials while winning tens of billions of pounds worth of work since the 1980s.
BAE has denied any wrongdoing.
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