Corruption Investigation & Criticisms
There have been numerous allegations that the Al Yamamah contracts were a result of bribes ("douceurs") to members of the Saudi royal family and government officials. Some allegations suggested that the former Prime Minister's son Mark Thatcher may have been involved, however he has strongly denied receiving payments or exploiting his mother's connections in his business dealings. The UK National Audit Office investigated the contracts and has so far never released its conclusions – the only NAO report ever to be withheld. The BBC's Newsnight observed that it is ironic that the once classified report analysing the construction of MI5's Thames House and MI6's Vauxhall Cross headquarters has been released, but the Al Yamamah report is still deemed too sensitive.
The 2007 documentary film Welcome Aboard Toxic Airlines contained evidence that vital data was withheld from a 1999-2000 Australian Senate Inqury into the health and flight safety issues relating to oil fumes on the BAe 146. The film also contains an Australian Senator speech about money being paid for silence by BAe on the fumes issues relating to the BAe 146.
Read more about this topic: British Aerospace
Famous quotes containing the words corruption and/or criticisms:
“Saigon was an addicted city, and we were the drug: the corruption of children, the mutilation of young men, the prostitution of women, the humiliation of the old, the division of the family, the division of the country—it had all been done in our name.... The French city ... had represented the opium stage of the addiction. With the Americans had begun the heroin phase.”
—James Fenton (b. 1949)
“I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premises on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments ... but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)