Labour & Elbit’s £2 Billion Military Deal

Andrew Feinstein, Paul Holden and Jack Cinamon challenge why Israel’s largest arms firm and a company mired in a corruption scandal are even being considered for training British troops.   

By Andrew Feinstein, Paul Holden and Jack Cinamon
Declassified UK

Britain’s Ministry of Defence might imminently award a 15-year contract, worth £2.5bn, to a consortium headed by the British subsidiary of the Israeli arms firm Elbit Systems and including the U.S. management consultancy firm, Bain and Company.

If successful, Elbit’s consortium would be responsible for training as many as 60,000 members of the U.K. military.

The consortium seems well-placed to win the contract; it is, in fact, one of only two shortlisted and preferred bidders.

The Ministry of Defence has already given the consortium a £2m contract so that it can develop its proposals further.

This is unacceptable. And it is frankly unbelievable that this consortium is even in the running considering its track record.

Elbit Systems UK is the fully owned subsidiary of Elbit Systems Limited. Elbit Systems Limited is headquartered in Tel Aviv and is listed on both the Israeli and U.S. stock exchanges.

Elbit is one of the two largest Israeli weapons manufacturers and is central to the IDF’s operations, providing 85% of its drones. Elbit International is also a major contributor to the F-35 fighter jet program, bragging that it plays a “critical role” in the “success of the world’s most advanced fighter jet.”

In July 2025, Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestine Territories, published an excoriating report setting out corporate complicity in Israel’s “plausibly” genocidal conduct in Gaza – for which she was subsequently sanctioned by Donald Trump.

Her report is clear that Elbit forms a central part of Israel’s military-industrial complex, which has become “the economic backbone of [Israel].”

“Elbit has cooperated closely on Israeli military operations, embedding key staff in the Ministry of Defence,” Albanese points out, further noting that Elbit provides “a critical domestic supply of weaponry.”

Bain

But we’re also deeply concerned about Elbit’s partner, Bain and Company.

Bain and Company (not to be confused with the mega hedge fund Bain Capital, which confirmed to us that it is not involved in the Elbit consortium) is a U.S.-based management consultancy firm.

Bain’s inclusion in the consortium’s bid was first reported in 2023 by the U.K. military magazine, Shephard News, based on unpublished behind-the-scenes documents.

Bain has a sordid and shocking history. In August 2022, the Cabinet Office placed Bain and Company on a “blacklist,” preventing it from getting any Cabinet Office contracts.

Jacob-Rees Mogg, the Tory Minister then responsible for the decision, explained that he had determined that Bain was “guilty of grave professional misconduct which renders its integrity questionable.”

This was because Bain was at the centre of a huge political and corruption scandal in South Africa. It was, in fact, considered to be one of the most damaging and outrageous cases of so-called “state capture” that took place under the scandal-ridden presidency of Jacob Zuma.

State capture involved private actors and businesses colluding with politicians, like Zuma, to “capture” state institutions for corrupt gain.

In 2022, a major judicial commission of inquiry (the Zondo Commission of Inquiry, headed by Chief Justice Raymond Zondo) made damning findings about Bain’s conduct in South Africa.

It found that Bain had worked closely with Zuma’s acolyte, Tom Moyane, to plot to take over the South African Revenue Service (SARS) – South Africa’s version of HMRC (His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs).

Bain helped Moyane plan for his first 100 days in charge, while Bain consultants met secretly with Zuma to hatch long-term plans to radically “reform” SARS.

Under Moyane, SARS’ well-respected units fighting serious organised economic crime were disemboweled; at the same time, Bain was awarded a lucrative “consultancy” contract. SARS is still recovering.

Zondo found: “The SARS evidence is a clear example of how the private sector colluded with the Executive, including President Zuma, to capture an institution that was highly regarded internationally and render it ineffective.”

Zondo also found that the Bain case was relatively unique in that it was “one of the few instances where President Zuma was himself directly and personally involved in the activities and plans to take over a government entity.’’

‘Self-Cleansed’

Bain and Company threatened legal action following the U.K.’s decision to blacklist the company.

In 2023, the Tories relented and removed Bain from the blacklist, saying that Bain and Company had proved it had “self-cleansed,” despite allegations that Bain’s London and Boston offices had spent years trying to cover up the scandal.

Remarkably, the incoming Labour government was reported to have looked into the possibility of reintroducing the ban.

Responding to a letter from Labour peer Peter Hain in October 2024, cabinet minister Pat McFadden, said he had inquired about reinstating the ban but was told there were “no legal routes to do so.”

He nevertheless said he shared Hain’s concerns. So why is this Labour government now on the cusp of giving this same company a share of a 15-year contract?

In South Africa, Bain was put on a ten-year procurement blacklist, which remains in place.

In July this year it was confirmed that Bain had shut down its South African consultancy operations, with the Financial Times reporting insiders saying that the company’s local reputation had been destroyed by the scandal.

The carcass of Bain’s South African business would be repurposed as a “hub” to support Bain’s other international work.

These are the types of companies that the U.K. is poised to mainline into the very DNA of the British military and the British state: Elbit, its parent company one of the most important partners to the IDF in Gaza; and Bain and Company, only recently blacklisted for serious professional misconduct for its role in undermining the fabric of South Africa’s democracy.

The idea that the U.K. would award this consortium, and these companies, any sort of contract, never mind a 15-year contract of such importance, is an outrage. It must be stopped.

Andrew Feinstein is a former ANC MP, the author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade and After the Party: Corruption, the ANC and South Africa’s Uncertain Future. He is a board member of Declassified UK.

Paul Holden is a journalist for Shadow World Investigations. Between 2020 and 2021, Holden worked directly with the Zondo Commission to assist its investigations into complex money laundering schemes used to hide and dissipate state capture loot in South Africa. Holden’s new book, The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney and the Crisis of British Democracy, is due to be published in Autumn 2025.

Jack Cinamon is a researcher at Shadow World Investigations and co-research coordinator at Corruption Tracker.

This article is from Declassified UK.

Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.