Arms Dealings
In the 1980’s the Conservative MP’s didn’t just collect money in brown paper envelopes for asking questions, they did a lot of work to help their friends in the arms industry too. Although in all fairness, some of the people in the arms industry thought that the Tories were just helping themselves.

After a series of scandals culminating in the “Arms to Iraq affair” an inquiry was launched into the arms business lead by the fox hunting inquistor Lord Justice Scott. In 1996, in a bid to limit the damage to the Government the Tories only allowed Labour access to the final report, which ran at about 1,000 pages long, three hours before the report was debated in the House of Commons. In many ways the debate was a watershed moment in British politics. The Tories were up to their necks in sleaze, economic incompetence and had been caught flogging weapons to the very people the UK had fought against in the Gulf war. This was to be the moment when Ministers like William Waldergrave had their jobs and careers hovering in the balance. Robin Cook made his name that day by organising a team of researchers to break down the contents of the report in those three hours and leading the Opposition response. New Labour pledged to reform the system for the exporting of arms when it got into power. Now, just seven years later, New Labour are finally getting round to introducing new legislation. Unfortunately, like much of New Labour’s promises of reform, what they are offering falls far short of what is needed. This week Mark and his fantastically talented team look at two of the problems that New Labour fail to deliver on in reforming the exporting of arms:- Licensed Production Export Control and End Use Monitoring. Licensed Production Many British arms firms license the production of their “goods” to other companies in other countries. Once made the arms are not subject to UK export controls and can be sold to whichever nations the host country allows. This is not the case for US companies; no matter where the arms company is in the world, if the license comes from the US the final products are subject to US arms controls. Sadly, this extension of regulation doesn't happen in the UK and, despite years of campaigning and vociferous lobbying on the issue, it is not addressed by the Export Control Bill. End Use Monitoring Purchasers of British arms are required to supply a certificate of 'end-use' which theoretically allows the UK government to ensure that they do not issue export licenses for arms that will end up in the wrong hands. The system has long been criticised by NGO's who have claimed that scant attention is ever paid to the end user certificates with the result that arms end up in disreputable and often unknown hands. The system is also criticised since the 'end user' has often been in reality a transit point for the arms to be sent on to a destination which the UK government would not directly grant a license for. The Scott Report illustrated this in striking detail by showing how British arms with seemingly innocuous end user destinations such as Singapore actually ended up in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Heckler & Koch Heckler and Koch are owned by Royal Ordnance, who are in turn owned by BAe Systems, the UK arms firm famous for selling Hawk jets to Indonesia during its occupation and brutal repression of East Timor. Heckler and Koch make a sub-machine gun called an MP5 which is used all over the world. In fact you’ll often see British police forces with them, particularly at airports or in the City of London. The MP5 is also licensed for production in Pakistan, Turkey and Iran. So a British-owned, German-based company is licensing the production of its guns in countries that have completely different systems of export control. In short, an MP5 sub-machine gun made in Iran could be sold to places that a Heckler and Koch original gun would never legally get to if it came from Europe. Mark Thomas, Arms Dealer So, Mark and his team of dedicated moral probers decided to try and prod the arms industry’s underbelly to find out if they could order licensed guns for places that the UK wouldn’t normally sell to. They set up a front company with a phone, an email address and a fax machine and started prodding… They started in Switzerland with a firm called Brugger & Thomet, who are Heckler & Koch’s official Swiss agent. We’d heard that Switzerland’s system of export controls was weaker than European Union member states. At the time that we started our research, Switzerland had not joined the United Nations and was therefore outside even international regulations. We chose Algeria as a country which the UK would not usually sell arms to. With an appalling track record on human rights, Algeria has been recently supplied by the UK with military equipment but, in the words of the DTI, “nothing that really goes bang”. On the day Mark phoned Brugger & Thomet the Swiss tightened up their export controls. Brugger and Thomet could not do the deal. So we sat back and decided to phone the arms companies with Heckler & Koch licenses. We phoned Pakistan Ordnance Factories, MKEK in Turkey and Iranian Defence Industries Association, asking for a quote for 200 MP5 sub-machine guns. But this time we thought we’d choose a country where Britain REALLY shouldn’t sell arms to…like Zimbabwe. In February this year, Zimbabwe had a European Union embargo placed on it so that no arms could be sold to them from any EU state. MKEK, the state owned defence manufacturer in Turkey, quoted us $850 per gun (including 2pcs. of magazine, carrying sling and plastic cleaning rod). They said that an “End User Certificate” is required and that the sale would “be subject to the approval of the Turkish Authorities”. Interestingly they also told us that some of the parts for their guns come from Heckler & Koch’s factory in Germany… "There are some very minor parts, for example plastic parts for the butt stock... we import the raw materials from Germany." Mark talks to MKEK, Turkey, 25 April 2002 POF, Pakistan Ordinance Factories, the state owned arms manufacturer in Pakistan offered to sell 200 MP5 sub-machine guns to Zimbabwe, at a mere $550 per gun. fancy a job? Mark phoned Pakistan Ordnance Factories back about their quote and was offered the chance to meet a company representative in the Pakistani Embassy in London. At this meeting the POF representative confirmed that upgrades were available directly through them, something BAe Systems later denied and said “there is no right to automatic provision of upgrades”. Funny. The POF representative also gave Mark a catalogue. On page one of this catalogue were pictures of two types of Anti-Personnel mine! The next day, Mark spoke again to POF. They again offered to send the guns to Zimbabwe but asked Mark not to put too big a mark up on them as this just damaged everybody’s business. They said they hoped that the MP5’s would not be going to any rebel groups in Zimbabwe (there aren’t any – its just in a state of terror!), offered Mark a free fibreglass carrying case worth $82 for every order of over 1000 weapons and then said: "We’re looking for people who can promote our products, if you think you’ve got contacts and you think you’ll be strong [in Zimbabwe] we’d be pleased to give you an authorisation in the future. We can also work on a small percentage for you..." - Pakistan Ordinance Factories to Mark Thomas, 26 April 2002 Wow. So Mark has been offered the official POF dealership for Zimbabwe! Its been a bit of a weird week really… We needed to let POF know that we weren’t actually real arms dealers but were a bunch of cowboy journalists from London, so Mark phoned Pakistan Ordnance Factories back…