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Weir Group has been quite smart in its handling of criminal proceedings over kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein's regime, to secure deals in the oil and water business.

Not only did it fess up in 2004, when it says the £3m payments first came to light.

This week, it got its contrition into the public domain before the charges were brought to court.

Following an agreement with the Crown Office, that played out at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday, Weir Group accepted the confiscation of nearly £14m that it's assumed to have profited from the contracts.

Today, it learned it's paying another £3m as a fine.

Abject apology

It was reckoned back in 2004 that the total extent of the kickbacks over the Oil for Food trading with Iraq, allowed but constrained by UN sanctions, came to around £1bn.

Saddam's people were able to cream off 10% from every deal, and Weir's people reckoned it was impossible to win the contract without offering that through an agent.

By that reckoning, Weir's wrong-doing was on a relatively small scale.

But, as chairman Lord Smith of Kelvin has abjectly apologised three days in a row - today doing so for the cameras, alongside chief executive Keith Cochrane - it was wrong, the company has changed, so have the senior personnel, Weir now takes ethics seriously, and it won't be happening again.

Careering into calamity

So who was in charge when this was going on?

That would be Lord Smith's immediate predecessor - Sir Ron Garrick, one of Scotland's leading industrialists, building up Weir Pumps during 40 years with the company, as chief executive from 1982 to 2001, and as chairman from 1999 to 2002.

Payment of the kickbacks to which Weir Group has admitted began while Garrick was executive chairman and looking for a replacement chief executive. During that two year period, he appointed Australian Mark Selway to the top job.

A blemish on an otherwise unblemished career as venerable captain of Scottish industry?

Sadly not. Sir Ron went on to play a starring role in Halifax Bank of Scotland, appointed to the post of deputy chairman and senior independent director in 2003.

You probably won't need reminding what happened to HBOS over the subsequent five years, and the questions about the failure of its non-executive directors to spot a bank careering into calamity on the back of a reckless lending splurge.

University review

Garrick, a son of Glasgow's Springburn, was also a director of Shell UK, part of the oil giant which, at that time, was in the line of critical fire for its activities in Nigeria.

On a topical note, Sir Ron was also the Scot chosen by the last Conservative government to find a sustainable route to funding Scotland's universities.

His results, alongside the UK-wide Dearing Review, advocated a payment by graduates and a cut to three years in Scotland's honours degree.

That was 14 years ago, and on Thursday, Education Secretary Mike Russell gives us the latest attempt to resolve that tricky issue.