It is a point verging on the trite: an arms corporation suspected of engaging in corrupt practices, spoiling dignitaries and officials and undermining the body politic.
But one such corporation is France’s Thales defence group whose offices were raided on June 26 and June 28 in France, the Netherlands and Spain.
The prosecutors are keen to pursue charges ranging from standard corruption and attempts to influence foreign officials, to instances of criminal association and money laundering.
Even the French republic, despite it having a narcotics-grade addiction to the international arms industry, thought Thales might have gone that bit too far.
Some 65 investigators from the Nanterre-based office responsible for battling corruption, financial and fiscal offences have been deployed.
A further 12 magistrates from the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), with the assistance of the European agency Eurojust, aided by Dutch and Spanish officials, have been involved.
The police raids arise from two separate investigations. The first, starting at the end of 2016, involved suspicions of corruption pertaining to a foreign official, criminal association and money laundering.
The topics of interest: the sale of submarines to Brazil, along with the construction of a naval base.
The second started in June last year, with claims of suspected corruption and influence peddling, criminal conspiracy and money laundering connected with the supply of military and civilian equipment to overseas clients.
Giving little away, a spokesperson for Thales insisted that the corporation “strictly complies with national and international regulations”.
The company propaganda on such compliance with national and international regulations is plentiful: after perusing the material, one forgets that this is a defence outfit.
Group Secretary and General Counsel Isabelle Simon, for instance, is quoted as saying that the company, over the course of two decades “has developed a robust policy on ethics, integrity and compliance, which are the foundations of our social responsibility and the key to building a world we can all trust”.
The anti-corruption policy, so it is claimed, is also “regularly reviewed and updated to reflect increasingly strict international rules and requirements on corruption and influence peddling,” a point “further strengthened by Thales’s progress towards ISO 37001 certification.”
The company wonks assume that workshops and training sessions are the way to go when inspiring a spirit of compliance. The more sessions you run, the more enlightened you become.
In boasting about its “zero tolerance on corruption” we are told that 11,270 “training sessions on corruption and influence peddling were delivered in 2019-2020”.
Other features are: a code of conduct (intended to stomp on any corrupt practices); a “corruption and influence peddling risk map”; a disciplinary system; an anti-bribery management system; and an internal whistleblowing program.
But such measures tend to be cosmetic. Even defence contractors need to show an iota of principle and “social responsibility”.
But an iota is what it remains.
As Bernard Keane of Crikey observed: “Bribery might be a tool in Thales’ arsenal for dealing with defence officials around the world, along with stringing out negotiations for its own ends and refusing to comply with request [sic] for tender requirements.”
This last point should be of particular interest to Australian MPs, given that the defence department’s 2020 $1.2 billion 10-year contract with Thales has been referred to the National Anti-Corruption Commission.
The contract covers the management of Commonwealth-owned munitions facilities at Mulwala in New South Wales and Benalla in Victoria.
The referral was prompted by an Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) report, which found a skewed tender process.
A bottle of champagne had been solicited by a defence official in the course of discussions, which also involved providing Thales with confidential information. This worked so well for the official in question, he later joined Thales.
Thales got what it wanted, effectively bypassing a competitive tender process, with the blessing of the defence department.
This took place despite a 2017 offer from the global munitions company, NIOA, and the ANAO’s recommendation to pursue an appropriate tender option.
The audit found that “Defence’s management of probity was not effective and there was evidence of unethical conduct”.
This is putting it mildly, given that Thales had not only been involved in drafting the criteria for the request for tender (RTF) documents (some 28 workshops were held for that purpose between October 2018 and August 2019), but did so deficiently.
This very point was made by the Defence Department in October 2019. It noted no fewer than 199 “non-compliances” by the company against the RTF.
Apart from giving officialdom their time in the spotlight, investigations into corruption do little to alter the spoliation that arises from the defence industry.
Defence contractors are regularly feted by government authorities, often with the connivance of the revolving door. Yesterday’s officials are today’s arms sales consultants.
The defence sector, notably for such countries as France, is simply too lucrative and powerful to be cleansed of its unscrupulousness.
Even as these investigations into Thales are taking place, the Brazilian military establishment, for example, has happily continued doing business with the weapons giant.
In February last year, Thales trumpeted it had secured a contract with the Brazilian Airspace Control Department for the supply and installation of ADS-B ground surveillance stations to improve the safety of commercial civil aviation: 66 stations are to be installed in more than 20 Brazilian states.
Thales announced on June 17 that the Brazilian Air Force had acquired the Ground Master 200 Multi-mission All-in-one (GM 200 MM/A) tactical air surveillance radars.
It described such radars as giving the user “superior situational awareness for air surveillance, as well as ground-based air defence operations up to Mid-Range Air-Defence”.
Some gloating follows: “The contract signed with the FAB consolidates Thales’ position as a leader in the radar market in Brazil.”
One can only wonder how many palms were greased, and local regulations breached for that to happen.
[Dr Binoy Kampmark currently lectures at RMIT University.]