Ed Gets In A Jam

I’m in a pickle. After I left Ministerial Office I accepted the Chairmanship of  an importer and distributor of ICs, Ed confides to his diary.

The salary was so large I should probably have smelled a rat, but I was flattered to be approached and it was run by a couple of old industry mates.

Now I have learnt that the firm has been importing US chips and supplying them to the Russians whose deficient chip industry means they’re forever looking for Western chips to control their military equipment and weaponry.

Components with  US chip company markings were discovered in the KUB-BLA ‘kamikaze’ UAV, an E95M target drone, an Orlan-10 UAV, and a number of radio sets used by the Russian Army.

Other US-made ICs have been found in the satellite guidance systems for long range Russian missiles, and ADI ADCs were found in the jamming board of a Russian Army R-330 BMV Borisggbsk-2 EW system. An these are just a few of many examples.

It seems that the chips were all imported into Russia by a firm called Sertal based outside Moscow which  advertises  ICs for sale from TI, Cypress, ADI and ST and, would you believe it, Yours Truly is Chairman of the company which shipped the ICs to Sertal.

As a Peer of the Realm and a former Cabinet Minister I will be flayed alive if this gets out, and I have decided that the only way out is to throw myself on the mercies of the DPP and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and confess everything while handing over the documentation to secure convictions.

This, of course, means dropping my mates in the claggy. I could  warn them of what I’m going to do but, if I do, they’ll find a way to take me down with them. It’s my neck or theirs and that’s a quick and easy decision.

I know the DPP of course – like all lawyers he’s a bit of a stickler for correct procedure – but I figure he might agree to a private meeting if he thinks it might do him some good politically.

“If you want to show that the UK is a major disruptor of the flow of Western military tech to Russia, “I tell the DPP on the blower, “I have everything you need – documentation, images, digital archives – to successfully prosecute some arch-villains engaged in running high-technology components to the Russian military.”

He goes for it like  a rat up a drainpipe. A whiff of international celebrity turns these guys on. We fix on a discreet rendezvous. 

I resolve to be affability personified at next week’s board meeting which may be the company’s last. Mates come and mates go. One has to be philosophical.