- Update 21 April 2017: In 2016, Georgiana George provided the Guardian with Ministry of Defence police correspondence dated 16 October 2014 and 16 May 2016 stating that under the Data Protection Act the Police National Computer record relating to her had been changed to remove “requires further extensive enquiries” and to show that the MoD police took “No Further Action”.
A British corruption investigation into the sale of frigates to Romania brought further controversy yesterday, when a Romanian admiral alleged his impoverished country had paid three times more than necessary.
The price was £116m, but Victor Blidea, who at the time was chief of the Romanian naval operations command which took delivery of the two British ships, said the Dutch navy had been offering similar surplus frigates, better-equipped and still in active service, for £40m. He told the Guardian in Bucharest: “We had information at the time about Dutch frigates on sale offered at £20m apiece. They were ‘hot’ ships, ships on duty, and not second-hand ships. The British frigates are not bad, but they don’t fit in the [Romanian] navy’s budget. Their maintenance is too costly. We also have to equip them properly, which is again lots of money.”
The two Type 22s, HMS London and HMS Coventry, were sailed to Constanta, Romania’s Black Sea naval base, last year, after officials in the Ministry of Defence had done a deal with BAe. Britain’s biggest arms company was paid £116m by Romania to refurbish them. But the British taxpayer only received scrap value, £100,000 each. The MoD’s disposal agency says Romania could eventually pay more than £250m to fully equip the ships with new weapons and electronic systems.
The Serious Fraud Office in London is probing alleged secret payments of “commission” totalling almost £8m, made offshore by BAe to bring about the deal. The SFO has been liaising with its Romanian counterpart. At the weekend, the Romanian anti-corruption department, the DNA, raided the Bucharest offices of Axis Trading, a consultancy run by Georgiana George, 41. Her husband, Barry George, a Briton aged 61, acted as agent for BAe during the negotiations. Last week an SFO-MoD police team raided the Georges’ Chelsea flat in London; documents were seized, and the couple taken to a police station for extended questioning before release. The SFO said it was investigating suspected corruption.
To buy the frigates, the Romania’s then government headed by Adrian Nastase, which was ousted in elections in 2004, raised from the London office of Deutsche Bank, with official backing from the UK’s Export Credits Guarantee Department.
The then chief executive of Britain’s disposal agency, Sym Taylor, was “completely unaware” of BAe’s alleged commission payments at the time, according to senior MoD sources. The MoD’s arms sales department, whose current ministerial head in the Lords is Labour donor and businessman Paul Drayson, yesterday refused to comment on the claim that Romania paid too much.