TOP military contractor RTX agreeing to pay more than $950 million (£726m) to resolve bribery and fraud claims “barely touches the surface,” say activists.

RTX, the second largest weapons manufacturer in the United States with yearly revenue of over $67 billion (£51bn), agreed on Wednesday to pay more than $950m to resolve allegations that it defrauded the government and paid bribes to secure business with Qatar.

The company reached the agreement in separate cases in federal court in Brooklyn and Massachusetts and agreed to hire independent monitors to oversee compliance with anti-corruption and anti-fraud laws.

It also agreed to show good conduct for a three-year period.

RTX, formerly known as Raytheon, has been supplying Israel’s Iron Dome air defence missile system since 2014.

Activists have slammed RTX and corruption in the military industrial complex.

Executive director of Shadow World Investigations Andrew Feinstein said: ”RTX, one of the biggest suppliers of ordinance to the conflict in Yemen and the genocide in Gaza has now, by settling, effectively admitted to paying bribes in Qatar.

“Are there no depths to which this merchant of death will not stoop?”

US-based journalist Eugene Puryear, one of the hosts on Breakthrough News, said: “The arms trade is a cesspool of corruption deeply embedded at the highest levels of government in the richest nations. 

Mr Puryear also pointed out that “US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin is a former Raytheon board member. 

He said: “Raytheon’s immorality is on full display in this corruption judgement, and their role [is] as a principal supplier of bombs and missiles to Israel.”

Long-time peace campaigner and independent MP Jeremy Corbyn told the Morning Star: “The disgusting behaviour of RTX barely scratches the surface of the endemic corruption of the military industrial complex. 

“Next, we must bring arms companies to justice for the crimes against humanity in Gaza, which they have not only enabled, but profited from.”

Mr Corbyn said: “Let this be a lesson for politicians here in Britain: get the financiers of war out of our politics.”

“We know from past corruption scandals that bribery and corruption in endemic in the military industrial complex,” observed Communist Party international secretary Kevan Nelson.

Former Morning Star international editor Steve Sweeney said: “This just exposes the high-level corruption and shady links between governments and arms companies as the military-industrial complex makes soaring profits through never ending wars. 

“It pays its blood money and will continue raking it in while Palestinians burn and thousands upon thousands are killed by their missiles.”

RTX said in a statement that it is “taking responsibility for the misconduct that occurred” and is “committed to maintaining a world-class compliance programme.”