Posted on 02/15/2008 2:32:10 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
February 15, 2008
Bribes inquiry was warned of ‘another 7/7’, court told
Christine Buckley, Industrial Correspondent, and Fiona Hamilton
Fraud investigators were told they faced the possibility of “another 7/7” and the likely loss of “British lives on British streets” if they pressed on with inquiries into Saudi Arabia’s arms deals, it was revealed yesterday.
High Court documents showed that the Saudis threatened to cut off intelligence, potentially making it easier for terrorists to attack London, if the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) did not drop its investigation into alleged corruption in deals with BAE systems.
After threats by the Saudis over co-operation in national security issues, the former Prime Minister Tony Blair subjected the SFO to “irresistible pressure” to stop its inquiries, it was claimed.
Lord Justice Moses, hearing a legal challenge to the scrapping of the inquiry, said the Government appeared to have “rolled over” in December 2006.
The judge, presiding over the legal action by anti-corruption campaigners to have the decision overturned, questioned why an attempt was not made to get the threat to withdraw co-operation with the UK lifted by the Saudis.
He said: “No one said, ‘You can’t talk to us like that’.”
The SFO had been investigating allegations of corruption against BAE for more than two years. It was alleged that Britain’s biggest defence company had paid huge sums of money in bribes to certain members of the Saudi Royal Family in connection with the £43 billion al-Yamamah arms deal in the 1990s, which included the sale of 72 Tornado aircraft.
BAE has always denied any wrongdoing and has emphasised that the al-Yamamah contract was a government-to-government deal.
When Robert Wardle, the SFO director, announced that the corruption investigation was being dropped, Mr Blair said that if it had continued it would have damaged Britain’s national security interests.
At the time BAE and the Government were negotiating a key order for Typhoon fighters with the Saudis, a deal that was sealed last year.
Yesterday Dinah Rose, QC, acting for pressure groups, said that Mr Blair went too far when he applied “irresistible pressure” to end the SFO’s investigation.
She claimed the former Prime Minister “stepped over the boundaries of what was permissible” and wrongly interfered in a legal matter following the Saudi threats.
Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threat to hold back information.
Ms Rose said that the prince met Foreign Office officials in London on December 5, 2006. The Prime Minister intervened a few days later.
In the SFO’s internal memos, investigators recorded they had been told of the likely loss of British lives if they continued in their work.
Lord Justice Moses, hearing the civil case with Mr Justice Sullivan, said that one possible view was that it was “just as if a gun had been held to the director’s head”.
Philip Sales, QC, appearing for the SFO, said that the SFO director had had “no choice” but to stop the BAE investigation as the threat from the Saudis “could not be obviated sensibly by other means”.
The judicial review, being brought by the Campaign Against Arms Trade and Corner House Research, which campaigns on corruption and social justice issues, is expected to last two days.
Ping!
The Camelnose is growing...the Saudi’s will own all soon enough.
No word on the Bush Justice Department investigating Saudi bribes to American politicians?
Maybe next week.
England - Utterly pwn3D by the Saudi terrorists.
If that were so, would this case be before the courts?
The corollary to this is, if a Saudi bigwig can make such a statement, does it then not follow that one must question the level of direct involvement in Jihadi Salafi terror by the Saudi govt, to say the least, mirroring that of Iran with Hizbollah.
Saudis RULE! From the President to Congress, they do.
“A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.” ~ Alexander Hamilton
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