The UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has spent the last 6 years chasing BAE systems over allegations that bribes were paid to secure foreign deals in a number of countries. Bribes are the least of the allegations involved in some international defense deals, and contract wins without inducements would be far more surprising in countries like Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, and South Africa. Nevertheless, the UK does have laws to prevent British firms from paying them, and the US Department of Justice chose to pursue the matter as well.
BAE Systems has settled with both governments, pleading guilty to technical violations but not criminal offenses, and paying about $400 million to the US DoJ, and GBP 30 million in the UK. I have the full history and details over at DID.
It will be interesting to see how future Saudi arms deals get done, given that bribes are a requirement.
Probably in partnership with Saudi firms, who will take care of the required bribes, all in return for slight adjustments in their workshare and payment rates over the life of the contract. Very likely even with partners and workshare/ recompense set, in part, by the Saudi authorities themselves as part of the deal. The foreign firms, whomever they may be, could end up becoming sub-contractors to Saudi firms, at least as far as the deal's official structure goes.
Anti-corruption laws do make a dent, but only in the small things, or in states without the combination of corruption and a culture of impunity. As long as they're determined to be corrupt on an official level, there will always be ways around it.
It will also be interesting to watch the consequences as more and more foreign firms from China, Brazil, Pakistan, India, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, et. al. continue to enter the global market for high-end weapon systems. Many of those states (plus Russia, plus France) have very different ideas about global anti-corruption laws, and are unlikely to conform.
As choices expand in the global arms marketplace - a trend that is already irreversible - anti-corruption laws will be only one area where the West's ability to influence global military developments is going to decline.
Hm.
"We would never pay bribes, which is illegal. This was merely the customary baksheesh, perfectly in accord with the cultural norms of their nation. You aren't suggesting that their culture is wrong or corrupt, I hope? I might have to report you to your diversity section."
Actually, it sounds like the DOJ just wanted a bribe too. '$400M, plus $50M to our friends the Brits, and we'll see those charges get dropped.'
I wonder what is the correlation between countries where military sales require bribes, and countries where the weapons, once purchased, are unmaintained, have parts stripped and sold, and end as hangar (armory/harbor) queens, ultimately to be sold for scrap. Having read tales of such in Dunnigan's StrategyPage newsletter for a long time, it seems like R^2 must be pretty high.
And probably highly related to those places where the military's duties, once it pulls off a parade and fly-by for national day, are deploying enough goons with small arms to make sure the citizens don't get too frisky.
I'm not so sure about the British, Grim, but characterizing the American DoJ's conduct as bribe-seeking sounds about right to me. With a dose of protectionism thrown in, since American contenders didn't get the contract and the Eurofighter did.
Tim, the correlation between corruption and Potemkin Militaries (a bit of a misnomer, as Potemkin's villages were real) is high but not absolute. In a corrupt culture, it becomes far more likely that maintenance dollars get diverted by people in the system.
But there are also other cultural and institution-specific characteristics that can tip it one way or the other. Cultures that tend toward "puffery," for instance, have a corresponding tendency to want to show maximum flash, and will stint their maintenance (and sometimes their logistics-related) budgets to do it. India has lots of tanks, for instance, but is said to lack the logistics tail to support the kind of armored thrusts that would make maximum use of offensive armor (vid. the thrust to Baghdad, and Thunder Run).
And the Saudis? They just pay outsiders to handle all that, as they do for many key areas of their society. Which is why the richest part of any Saudi military contract, by far, is the huge maintenance contracts that follow. They have recognized this as a dependency weakness, and the latest BAE contracts involve much more training of local personnel. Saudis have a reputation for being very unmotivated (other middle easterners often use the adjective "lazy"), so we'll need a few years to see if this takes.
Obviously, those maintenance contracts offer tremendous scope to recompense any payoffs that might be made in the purchasing phase. And the Saudi emphasis on using more local firms and individuals for maintenance would make "Saudi first" partnerships even simpler to execute.