L’OCDE attend des explications britanniques sur l’interruption de l’enquête Yamamah

Voilà bien une occurrence pleine de désordre et de mauvaise réputation, que ni la City ni le Financial Times ne goûtent : les officiels britanniques obligés de s’expliquer devant l’OCDE à propos de la décision de Blair d’arrêter l’enquête du Serious Fraud Office sur le scandale Yamamah.

Tandis que le SFO montre son alacrité et son entêtement en lançant une nouvelle enquête contre BAE sur un dossier sud-africain, le dossier Yamamah va être présenté devant la commission ad hoc de l’OCDE. Les Britanniques vont répondre à une requête de l’organisation internationale, érigée en enquêteur annexe pour la circonstance. Il s’agit d’une procédure complètement exceptionnelle, qui rend bien compte du caractère également exceptionnel de l’affaire traitée.

Le Financial Times nous en rapporte avec amertume les dernières nouvelles.

«The head of a committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a grouping of 30 big economies, has taken the unusual step of writing a formal letter to the Foreign Office to ask why the Serious Fraud Office stopped its investigation last month. The move means that the government faces continuing controversy over the case...

»The letter, sent on behalf of the OECD’s working group on corporate bribery, has asked for the information to be provided ahead of what is likely to be a lively discussion of the case at a regular meeting of the group this month, which will be attended by British officials.

»Mark Pieth, the bribery group’s chairman, said he sent the letter just before Christmas with the approval of the group’s management committee, which includes representatives of the US, Japan, France, Sweden, Switzerland and Greece. “I am not condemning Britain at the moment,” Mr Pieth said. “I just want to hear an explanation – and it had better be a good explanation.”

»A spokesman for the Foreign Office said: “We have received this letter and will be responding in due course.”

»Mr Pieth said the case highlighted concerns raised by the OECD in a critical 2005 report on how Britain was implementing an anti-bribery convention that came into force in 1999. One was the potential conflict of interest between the attorney general’s judicial role as the government’s senior law officer and his political role as a member of the cabinet. Another was that the public- interest test for determining whether corruption cases should go ahead could be abused if strong political and economic interests were involved.»

Pendant ce temps, sur l’autre front de la riposte à la décision de Blair de clore l’enquête, le gouvernement britannique a gagné un délai : «Lawyers for two UK-based non-governmental organisations, the Campaign against Arms Trade and Corner House Research, that have threatened a legal challenge over the case said they had agreed to hold off initiating proceedings to give the government more time to explain why the SFO had dropped the investigation.»

Mis en ligne le 6 janvier 2007 à 11H38