BRITAIN’S MI6 overseas intelligence agency allegedly paid a former South African secret service agent to carry out illegal bugging and phone tapping, the Sunday Times reported. Chris Clark claims he was paid 10,500 pounds (R105000) last year by a British diplomat in Paris to bug the telephone and steal documents belonging to Alain Gomez, honorary president of leading French defence firm Thomson-CSF. At the time, the company was in secret talks with Marconi Electronic Systems over a merger which would have undermined British Aerospace, one of Britain’s leading defence companies, said the paper.