Word: britishized
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Europe's biggest weapons maker, BAE Systems is used to mounting a defense. But the British firm may soon face its toughest fight yet. Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said Thursday it plans to prosecute BAE over allegations - consistently denied by the company - that the company paid millions of dollars in bribes to land lucrative business from countries in Africa and Eastern Europe. The agency will soon ask Britain's Attorney General for permission to start legal proceedings, it said in a short statement. BAE, for its part, would "deal with any issues raised in those proceedings...
...year-old corruption probe - the most serious yet concerning a major British firm - focuses on deals secured by BAE to supply aircraft to South Africa and the Czech Republic, frigates to Romania and radar equipment to Tanzania. In negotiating with the company, the SFO has hoped to extract a plea bargain - it's thought that BAE has been mulling a settlement, though it's unclear what, if anything, the firm would consider admitting to. But given the company's statement, it also appears BAE is ready to defend itself in court. (Read: "Court Blasts Blair Government...
...face if found guilty - was enough to worry some of the firm's investors. The company's stock fell more than 5% Thursday following the SFO's statement. After a checkered few years, BAE's reputation will likely fare little better. Concern for Britain's national security pushed the British government in 2006 to order a halt to a separate SFO probe into allegations that BAE paid bribes to secure business with Saudi Arabia in the mid-1980s. The inquiry into the $69 billion "Al-Yamamah" arms deals, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted, risked the withdrawal of Saudi cooperation...
...talked up for months. But as the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China prepare for crucial talks with Iran in Geneva on Oct. 1, there's a growing realization that the strategy might not work. "The hype around blocking gas is hugely overdone," says Richard Dalton, who was British ambassador to Iran until 2006 and is now an associate fellow at the London think tank Chatham House. "People use this term Achilles' heel, but it has got very little substance...
...have bigger fish to fry [than Iran]," says Mark Fitzpatrick, a former State Department official and now director of Nuclear Nonproliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "They all have bigger markets elsewhere, including in the U.S." Indeed, even talk of a refined-petroleum blockade convinced British Petroleum to halt its exports to Iran last year. Oil analysts believe Reliance has suspended sales to Iran too. (See pictures of terror in Tehran...