Last May 12, when U.S. Department of Justice officers at the Houston airport slapped a subpoena into the hands of Michael Turner, then CEO of London-based BAE Systems Plc, it was a smack heard round the world. They also grabbed and examined his computer and documents he was carrying. BAE, with major subsidiaries in the United States, Australia and India, is Europe’s largest military defense contractor. And U.S. prosecutors had stepped in where the Brits feared to tread.
The subpoena sought evidence about payments the company had made to secure an $85 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Company officials had contended that they paid perfectly legal commissions to an agent, and that the payments were approved by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. But the United Kingdom’s Serious Fraud Office thought they sounded an awful lot like bribes. (The SFO is England’s equivalent of the Department of Justice’s criminal fraud section.)
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