The Liam Fox affair: the latest example of corruption in government and business
Dr Liam Fox decided to
fall on his ministerial sword, or was thrown onto it, after the publication of
a report following an investigation into his conduct by Cabinet Secretary Sir
Gus O’Donnell which found him guilty of clear breach of the ‘ministerial code
of conduct’. Parliamentary Standards Commissioner John Lyon is to launch
another investigation into Dr Fox and the press are still circling the
ex-minister like sharks around a bloodied survivor from a shipwreck.
We are left wondering what this right-wing Tory has
done to upset enough of the establishment to warrant this attention.
There are accusations of misused public funds but
that is nothing special among bourgeois parliamentarians of any hue; in fact
their official wage even before ‘perks’ could well be described as a misuse of
public money.
Perhaps the Government’s cuts to the defence budget
have angered some of their masters and Fox has paid with his head as a shot
over the Government’s bow? On the other hand this is a time of especially rich
pickings for the arms corporations overseas sales and Dr Fox has certainly been
involved in helping them.
Perhaps rival business interests are clearing him
out of the way to have someone in the MOD and Cabinet batting for them?
Or maybe this irksome man has amassed enough
personal enemies to be targeted as the latest sacrificial lamb to be ritually
slaughtered in public to try and prove that the establishment is serious about
clearing dishonesty out the Augean stables that are the natural habitat of
any British government?
Whatever the reasons, in the “media frenzy”,
several interesting items were revealed, if only in passing, re arms sales,
front companies, bogus charities and Israel and the way these various
connections intertwine.
There were also, of course, plenty of allusions
from both the sensationalist and ‘serious’ bourgeois press that Fox’s
relationship with Adam Werritty was ‘more’ than that of good pals. However,
whether they are gay or not is immaterial; it is not something that adds to
either our condemnation of him or gives him any special defence. It is for us
an irrelevance. To put it into cruder terms, we don’t care who is screwing who
so long as they are not screwing the working class! No, their murky political
and business relationship is what should and does concern us.
Werritty certainly had almost unlimited and
immediate access to Fox whether in Parliament, his MOD office or even on
Government business abroad; and whether the O’Donnell report admits it or not,
Werritty was recognised by those foreign governments, and both British and
foreign ‘businessmen’ dealing with the British establishment through the MOD,
as an important player who could speak certainly for Fox and perhaps even for
the Government itself. It is not for nothing that Werritty had business cards
printed portraying himself as an advisor to Dr Fox: he was just that and was
present during many meetings discussing arms sales, methods of repression, and
shady business deals.
The globe-trotting of Werritty to attend Fox’s
overseas meetings, often as part of the Minister’s entourage, was an expensive
business and could not lightly be taken up even by a wealthy businessman – but
Werritty had no worries on that score. He had set up a private company,
Pargav, as a not-for-profit organisation to ‘support his work’ in the Middle East. This company picked up the tab for all Werritty’s first class air flights and
rooms in the best hotels etc. But where did the company get the money to pick
up these tabs? It seems that the company relied on donations, somewhere around
£147,000 according to some reports, from companies and individuals to ‘support
the work’ of Mr Werritty in the Middle East. We know that three of those
donors were very well known to each other: Mick Davis who runs the massive
mining company, Xstrata, Michael Lewis and Poju Zabludowic. Mick Davis has previously given £150,000 to the Conservative Party in 2010-11 and a further
£7,500 to the Education Secretary Michael Gove. He also threw £100,000 into
the NO2AV campaign this year. South African Davis is also the head of the
United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIP), the foremost fundraiser in Britain for Israel.
Michael Lewis is a top financier and closely linked
to the British Israel Communications and Research Centre (Bicom), the leading
lobbyist for Israel in the UK, and he also donates to the Tory Party.
Poju Zabludowic, a real estate tycoon, is the
chairman of Bicom and has also made large donations to the Tories. In June,
both Davis and Zabludowic were part of a delegation that met with William Hague
MP to discuss the ‘Arab Spring’ and likely impacts of it on Israel.
These connections and links spread further as we
learned that Lee Petar, a boss of Tetra Strategy, a lobbying firm that
introduced a Dubai ‘defence contractor’ to Adam Werritty, had previously been
in charge of communications for Bicom.
A company that donated money to Pargav is IRG which
describes itself as “an international professional services firm that helps
governments”. This Washington-based company is owned by L3
Communications. One of the investors in L3 Communications is Michael Hintze’s
hedge fund CQS which has around £21 million tied up in L3. In July Liam Fox told
parliament that he had decided not to revive the Nimrod early warning aircraft
project and that the MOD would award the contract to L3 to provide the new
Rivet Joint aircraft.
Other donors to Pargav include G3 Good Governance
Group, an international investigation company run by former MI6 employees which
has an ongoing contract with BAE Systems, which in turn has £520 million worth
of MOD contracts, as well as the venture capitalist John Moulton who nowadays
owns the Readers’ Digest. According to the parliamentary report from Gus
O’Donnell “Dr Fox facilitated an introduction between Mr Werritty and a
donor” but didn’t say which one.
That covers most of what we know about Adam
Werritty’s financial ability to travel the world with Dr Fox and begs the obvious
question: why were all these people and organisations, with all their
connections and ‘business’ minds, so willing to pay for his travel and board?
Perhaps the fact that most had links with ‘defence interests’ would be enough
explanation for most people?
The meetings Adam Werritty ‘sat in on’ with Dr Fox
included briefing the then UK Ambassador Designate to Israel, Matthew Gould, on the MOD’s perspective of the security situation in the Middle East. He
attended the Defence Minister’s meetings with ‘businessmen’ and government
officials in Dubai. When Fox went to Israel to discuss the situation regarding
the Palestinians, Werritty was listed as being present. Werritty was also in Sri Lanka at the same time as Fox and was present at many meetings Fox had with Sri Lankan
government officials. The Sri Lankan Government have never denied that
Werritty was there selling arms and associated products.
Dr Fox certainly doesn’t mix morality with either
his business or political interests and told firms gathered at the Defence and
Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair in London that the best way
to safeguard jobs in the industry was to “widen the customer base”.
This ‘widening of the customer base included MOD approval of sales of shotguns,
teargas and rubber bullets to Bahrain and various ‘defence’ equipment to Saudi
Arabia, which both governments put to use earlier this year when the Saudi army
entered Bahrain, using armoured vehicles reportedly supplied by BAE Systems, to
help that government put down popular unrest and killing at least 30
protesters, injuring and imprisoning many more.
Another joint venture of Fox and Werritty was the
now dissolved ‘charity’ Atlantic Bridge. This ‘charity’ was run out of Liam
Fox’s Parliamentary office by its only employee, Adam Werritty, who was Chief
Executive of the UK branch. Liam Fox was its Chairman, Margaret Thatcher was a
Patron and its membership included the MPs George Osborne, William Hague and
Michael Gove. The published reason for the existence of Atlantic Bridge was to
“foster closer links between the US and Britain”, but the Charity
Commission eventually investigated it and concluded that Atlantic Bridge was
‘not an educational trust but a political organisation promoting a particular
view of the transatlantic alliance’ William Hague who, along with Osborne and
Gove, tried to defend Fox in parliament as the accusations and rumours leading
to his resignation built up, has since tried to play down his role in this sham
‘charity’, saying that he was “only a name on the letterhead” and that
he had “only exchanged a few sentences with Adam Werritty since becoming
Foreign Secretary”. Yet, when Hague published a book on William
Wilberforce, it was Atlantic Bridge, with Werritty as the Chief Executive, that
paid for the launch of the US edition of this book in New York. When Atlantic Bridge was wound up, it had £36,000 in its account but there seems to be no record
of where that money went. While in existence, Atlantic Bridge linked up with a
US neo-con organisation called the American Legislative Exchange Council.
This is a powerful lobbying organisation, which receives funding from
pharmaceutical, weapons and oil interests among others. It is heavily funded
by the Koch Charitable Foundation whose founder, Charles G Koch, is one of the
most generous donors to the Tea Party movement in the US. In recent years, the Tea Party has become a potent ultra-right force in American politics.
All of these links and connections, running into a
powerful web of private interests, are the latest proof of the correctness of
Engels’ observation that in a democratic republic, “wealth exercises its
power indirectly, but all the more surely”, first, by means of the “direct
corruption of officials” …; secondly, by means of an “alliance of the
government and the Stock Exchange”. (Quoted by Lenin in State and
Revolution).
The Fox affair is the latest confirmation also of
Lenin’s observation that “Finance capital has created the epoch of
monopolies, and monopolies introduce everywhere monopolist principles: the
utilisation of ‘connections’ for profitable transactions takes the place of
competition on the open market.” (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism).