Massive implications from last week's High Court decision in London overturning the British government decision to drop an investigation into alleged bribery and corruption in a major deal between arms maker BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia. The Serious Fraud Office abandoned the inquiry into a 1985 BAE deal worth billions of pounds to provide Riyadh with fighter jets and other military equipment. At the time, the Saudis had issued the British Government with a threat: if the investigation was not stopped, there would be no contract for the export of Typhoon aircraft and the previous close intelligence and diplomatic relationship would cease.

The court said Serious Fraud Office director Robert Wardle "was required to satisfy the court that all that could reasonably be done had been done to resist the threat."

"He has failed to do so. He submitted too readily because he, like the executive, concentrated on the effects which were feared should the threat be carried out and not on how the threat might be resisted. No-one, whether within this country or outside is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice."

The judges said the integrity of the system was at stake. "We fear for the reputation of the administration of justice if it can be perverted by a threat. Let it be accepted, as the defendant's grounds assert, that this was an exceptional case; how does it look if on the one occasion in recent memory, a threat is made to the administration of justice, the law buckles?"

The former attorney general Lord goldsmith is putting pressure on the Serious Fraud Office to appeal against the ruling.

So what's the upshot?

First, the reputation of the Serious Fraud Office has been seriously damaged, perhaps permanently.

Meanwhile, BAE is left trying to restore its own brand with speculation that an outsider might come in as a new broom to restore its reputation and cracking down on 260 employees supposedly engaged in unethical behavior. It would be more convincing if the company itself came clean.