Tanzania - radar - bribery - BAe- Blair & Hewitt - stealing aid money - and Barclays Bank's African re-birth

We had a little story on Thursday, November 16, 2006 - Aiding Africa - Tony, Barclays and BAE - a curious tale of President Kikwete and kickbacks which has erupted yet again. "BAE in new corruption probe as Tanzanian minister resigns over £500,000 bribery claim"

Andrew Chenge, who was attorney general at the time of the crooked £28Mn. deal (Now ex Minister of Infrastructure) has been found to have 1/2 Million pounds in an Jersey offshore account related to the 2002 radar deal which was un anted , over priced and the result of bribery ochestrated by Tony Blair and Patricia Hewitt who overruled Gordon Brown and Clare Short to grant BAE a government export licence for a military air traffic control system to Tanzania. Clare said the deals was was corrupt and "stank".

Commissions on the sale were made to a local agent in Tanzania to promote the radar sale, through an elaborate chain of offshore companies and a Swiss bank. The agent has now (apparently) left the country and is wanted by Interpol.

Apparently Barclays - who of course are rowing back in Africa from contempt for their support for South Africa's apartheid regime - provided in 1999 a £40 million loan - which subsequently was paid from aid given to Tanzania by Britain to assist sustainable development, including primary education.

Cosily and coincidentally Barclays were granted in October 2000 Barclays a banking licence to open branches in Tanzania. Their website baldly states ...

Barclays opened a new business in Tanzania in October 2000.

A lengthy SFO and painfully slow investigation in the UK has discovered that 31% of the deal's contract price had been diverted via Switzerland.

BAE transferred the money to a subsidiary, Red Diamond Trading, registered anonymously in the British Virgin Islands in February 1998 with accounts in banks London, Switzerland and New York who made payments to " agents" in South America, Tanzania, Romania, South Africa, Qatar, Chile and the Czech Republic.Red Diamond was also used to make payments to UK citizens who were working as consultants for BAE. These included the mysterious David Hart, who advised Thatcher during the miners' strike of the 1980s.

BAE have never exlained how or why this company , never revealed in the company accounts was set up and why. "Poseidon Trading Investments Ltd" was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands on June 25 1999 hich handled payments on the Saudi contracts.

Red Diamond then moved the cash to a Swiss account in the name of a Panama company, Envers Trading Corporation.

This outfit sported the 2 required Panamanian nominee directors but was under the control of a Tanzanian middleman, Shailesh Vithlani,(who had at the time a British passport) according to Dar es Salaam court papers



Sir Richard Evans, who lives at Freckleton in Lancashire was MD and later chairman of BAE and was responsible for the al Yamamah deal. He now works for the president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Sir Richard is chairman of Samruk, the oil and gas-rich central Asian country's state holding company. It was formed earlier this year to control a collection of state / Nazarbayev family enterprises. They include KazMunaiGas; Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (railways); Kazakhtelekom; KEGOC (Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Operating Company), and Kazpost (postal services).