A six-year investigation into BAE Systems has ended with Europe's largest defence company pleading guilty to minor accounting offences.

The company, which employs 32 000 people in Britain and 107 000 worldwide, will pay £285m in fines to settle long-running investigations into a series of arms deals over the past 25 years. Crucially for the company, notes a report in The Times, it has not admitted bribery - which would have excluded it from bidding for future defence contracts in Europe and the US. The settlement includes a $400m payment to the US Department of Justice, and BAE will plead guilty to conspiring to make false statements to the US Government. This is in relation to the sale of arms, including Tornado fighter jets, to Saudi Arabia in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as fighter deals with Hungary and the Czech Republic.
Full report in The Times