{"id":69449,"date":"2007-11-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2007\/11\/26\/bae-et-les-special-relationships-du-sport\/"},"modified":"2007-11-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-26T00:00:00","slug":"bae-et-les-special-relationships-du-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2007\/11\/26\/bae-et-les-special-relationships-du-sport\/","title":{"rendered":"BAE et les \u201cspecial relationships<\/em>\u201d: du sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Avec le retour au premier plan de l’affaire BAE-Yamamah<\/em>, mais cette fois selon une orientation plus typiquement am\u00e9ricaniste<\/a>, on peut mesurer combien les tensions USA-UK \u00e0 l’occasion de cette affaire sont grandes. L’article du New York Times<\/em> d\u00e9j\u00e0 signal\u00e9<\/a> nous apprend deux choses principalement:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t Le d\u00e9partement de la justice \u00e0 Washington (DoJ) a obtenu la coop\u00e9ration de la Suisse, ce qui impliquerait que le DoJ pourrait avoir acc\u00e8s aux d\u00e9tails de divers paiements, plus ou moins illicites, ou d\u00e9clar\u00e9s tels, dans les diverses affaires BAE impliqu\u00e9es.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t Le DoJ a \u00e9galement obtenu la coop\u00e9ration d’un t\u00e9moin important, l’homme d’affaires Peter Gardiner, qui a d\u00e9pos\u00e9 fin ao\u00fbt apr\u00e8s un voyage assez rocambolesque \u00e0 partir de la Suisse. Le FBI a \u00e9vit\u00e9 l’escale de Londres pour ne pas rencontrer d’obstacle du c\u00f4t\u00e9 britannique, et a pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9 passer par Paris (la France de Sarkozy semble ainsi para\u00eetre plus s\u00fbre que le Royaume-Uni de Gordon Brown).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00abOn a rainy morning this August, an unusual visitor arrived at the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington. Although a British citizen, he had, for security reasons, taken a circuitous route via Paris to meet with senior Justice Department prosecutors, F.B.I. agents and members of the criminal division of the Internal Revenue Service.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbDuring two days of questioning in a windowless conference room, that visitor, Peter Gardiner, detailed how he had helped BAE disburse millions to the Saudi royal family to pay for everything from luxury travel to female escorts, according to people with knowledge of the meeting who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tCes \u00e9volutions se font dans le cadre g\u00e9n\u00e9ral d’une r\u00e9elle tension entre Washington et Londres. Les Britanniques, au niveau gouvernemental, semblent se montrer extr\u00eamement acharn\u00e9s dans leur r\u00e9sistance \u00e0 toute intrusion am\u00e9ricaniste dans cette affaire. L’extrait ci-dessous de l’article du NYT impliquant des prolongements actuels aussi bien que des ramifications pass\u00e9es montre effectivement cette exacerbation des rapports USA-UK. Il montre l’extension de la m\u00e9sentente et de la concurrence entre cousins, notamment dans les march\u00e9s tch\u00e8ques et hongrois, o\u00f9 les Britanniques ne sont certainement pas en reste d’agressivit\u00e9 et de coups fourr\u00e9s.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00abBy the time Mr. Blair shut down the British investigation late last year, however, the Justice Department was already aware of BAE’s practices. As far back as July 2002, representatives from the State, Justice and Defense departments, as well as the C.I.A., sat down in Washington with senior British officials from the Ministry of Defense to complain about suspected bribery by BAE in Central Europe, the Persian Gulf and South Africa.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbSir Kevin Tebbit, then Britain’s permanent under secretary of the Ministry of Defense, rejected the suspicions as baseless. American officials who participated in the meeting later nicknamed him Sir Topham Hatt after a character in the Thomas the Tank Engine children’s series because of what they said was his almost haughty disdain for the allegations of bribery involving BAE and the manner in which he challenged them to detail evidence of wrongdoing.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbMr. Tebbit, now retired, declined to comment and referred questions about his interactions with American officials to his former employers in the Ministry of Defense. The ministry declined to comment.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbThe meeting with Mr. Tebbit came after the United States Defense Department, along with the military contractors Lockheed and Boeing, formally withdrew from a competition to sell fighter aircraft to the Czech Republic in 2001. A letter written by Lt. Gen. Tome H. Walters Jr., then head of overseas sales for the Pentagon, to the Czech foreign minister said that there was a lack of transparency in the negotiations. The letter also cited a conclusion by the United States government that competition for the contract was not above board. The contract was subsequently awarded to BAE and its Swedish partner, Saab.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbIn an interview, General Walters, now retired, said that the problems in the Czech Republic followed similar problems trying to sell American jets to the Hungarian government. BAE secured the Hungarian contract as well. American officials say they believe that the Hungarian and Czech governments were influenced by payments. They cite a C.I.A. briefing during which they were told that BAE paid millions of dollars to the major political parties in Hungary to win the contracts there.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbBAE said it is unaware of any investigations of the company in Hungary. BAE Systems has very strong policies and processes in place which it is clearly committed to communicating to its employees and advisers, a spokesman said. Any action which is unlawful, dishonest, harmful to others or otherwise against our policies, is unacceptable.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbAlthough Mr. Gardiner’s cooperation signaled a possible escalation in the American investigation, those with knowledge of the inquiry say British authorities are resisting requests from Washington for help. Representatives of the Home Office of Britain, which handles these requests, have told Parliament that they have yet to decide whether to cooperate.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbDespite tensions between the United States and Britain over the matter, Swiss law enforcement authorities have decided to cooperate with the Justice Department investigation, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The Swiss are likely to soon begin sharing records of financial transactions and bank accounts with American prosecutors. That will be crucial to charting what law enforcement officials describe as a flow of dollars from BAE to a network of company agents and public officials in Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Hungary and the Czech Republic.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tMis en ligne le 26 novembre 2007 \u00e0 14H11<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Avec le retour au premier plan de l’affaire BAE-Yamamah, mais cette fois selon une orientation plus typiquement am\u00e9ricaniste, on peut mesurer combien les tensions USA-UK \u00e0 l’occasion de cette affaire sont grandes. L’article du New York Times d\u00e9j\u00e0 signal\u00e9 nous apprend deux choses principalement: Le d\u00e9partement de la justice \u00e0 Washington (DoJ) a obtenu la… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3253,3792,6640,4619,5530,3345,3344,6220,5551,4364],"class_list":["post-69449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-americanisme","tag-bae","tag-doj","tag-gardiner","tag-hongrie","tag-relationships","tag-special","tag-suisse","tag-tchequie","tag-yamamah"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}