Richard Evans (BAe Systems)
Sir Richard Evans is the Chairman of BAE Systems. Before taking over BAe's military business in 1986, he was responsible for their links with Saudi Arabia. In 1998 he was caught up in a scandal when documents revealed that he had been involved in discussions with the Foreign Office and representatives of the Libyan Government over a £6 billion deal to supply planes to Libya, which was the subject of an embargo at the time. Sir Richard Evans sits on the Government's Competitiveness Advisory Group task force alongside Dr Tony Marchington, fellow arms manufacturer C.K. Chow and Dr Chris Evans. He also sits on the Government's Competitiveness Council with C.K. Chow and Sir Peter Bonfield. Lord Hollick was a director of BAe from 1992-1997. The former Vice Chairman of BAe, Richard Lapthorne was apponted by the Government in April 2000 to set up its Working Age Agency.
Peter Gershon, the Chief Operating Officer of BAE Systems, was given the job of head of the new Office of Government Commerce (OGC) in February 2000. He will be paid £180,000 (plus 3% bonus), making him the highest-paid civil servant in the country. He was appointed by Gordon Brown's Treasury in 1998 to head a review of Government procurement, the result of which was the recommendation that the Government should set up the OGC. 6 months later he was given the job of running it. He was Managing Director of GEC-Marconi since 1994, where he was paid around £800,000 a year. GEC-Marconi are the 6th largest 'defence' electronics contractor in the US, manufacturers of: airborne radar systems and avionics for military projects (including the Eurofighter); radar, command and information systems for air defence and the navy; infra-red sensors and airborne navigation systems. They manufacture underwater weapons and are the 'prime' contractor for Astute class submarines for the Royal Navy.
British Aerospace (BAe), now BAE Systems, gave the Labour Party more than £5,000 in sponsorship in 1998-9 and 2000-2001. BAE Systems is made up of arms manufacturer BAe (Europe's most profitable defence contractor and member of the European Airbus consortium - they own 20%) and the 'defence electronics' company GEC Marconi and multi-billion pound military contracts with the Government. They have eight staff working for free on secondment inside the Ministry of Defence. The Labour Party's pension fund hold shares in BAE Systems.
When BAE Systems was formed in 1999 from the £7.7 billion purchase of GEC Marconi by BAe, John Bridgeman, the Director-General of Fair Trading, recommended that the deal should be referred to the Competition Commission, but he was overruled by Stephen Byers, Labour's Trade and Industry Secretary.
BAe receives £2 billion a year from an arms-for-oil deal that Margaret Thatcher's Tory Government negotiated with Saudi Arabia in 1986, which includes 48 Tornado fighter planes ordered in 1993. The deal was examined by the National Audit Office but its report was never published, amid suggestions that it uncovered widespread kick-backs being paid to Saudi go-betweens. Their defence sales in 1997 totalled £6.4 billion. They own Heckler & Koch, the German gun-makers who supply guns to the British Police. Heckler & Koch also licence production of their assault rifles in countries notorious for oppressive regimes, like Burma and Turkey (the Turkish State runs the manufacturer MKEK, who sold 500 of the sub-machine guns to the Indonesian Government in 1998). BAe have won a contract to supply 600,000 of the Heckler & Koch assault rifles and a Rapier missile system to the Turkish Government to help them in their vicious war against the Kurdish people.
BAe sold their Hawk ground attack aircraft to Indonesia as 'trainer' jets. They continue to be exported, with the support of the Labour Government, because the Indonesian Government has promised that they 'will not be used to repress the civil population'. The East Timorese resistance movement, fighting the illegal Indonesian invasion of their country, have been bombed and napalmed by these Hawk aircraft. 200,000 people have been killed in East Timor since the invasion.
BAE Royal Ordinance have been heavily involved in the manufacturing of depleted uranium missiles, which were used extensively in the Gulf War and Kosovo. It is widely accepted that these weapons are linked with child leukaemia cases in the Gulf.
BAe sponsored an Employment and Education Q & A session chaired by David Blunkett at the Labour Party conference in 1999. BAe have paid £12 million to be sponsors of the Mind Zone section of the Millennium Dome.
