Blair hit by Saudi 'bribery' threat

[deminks]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2459780,00.html

SAUDI ARABIA is threatening to suspend diplomatic ties with Britain unless Downing Street intervenes to block an investigation into a £60m “slush fund” allegedly set up for some members of its royal family.

A senior Saudi diplomat in London has delivered an ultimatum to Tony Blair that unless the inquiry into an allegedly corrupt defence deal is dropped, diplomatic links between Britain and Saudi Arabia will be severed, a defence source has disclosed.

The Saudis, key allies in the Middle East, have also threatened to cut intelligence co-operation with Britain over Al-Qaeda.

They have repeated their threat that they will terminate payments on a defence contract that could be worth £40 billion and safeguard at least 10,000 British jobs.

The Saudis are furious about the criminal investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into allegations that BAE Systems, Britain’s biggest defence company, set up the “slush fund” to support the extravagant lifestyle of members of the Saudi royal family.

[habitual]

1. you've gotta be kidding me

this is friggin insane!!!

[MidwestTransplant]

2. Well since it was leaked to the press, Blair won't be able to make it

go away without anybody noticing.

[PassingFair]

3. The SERIOUS Fraud Office!

As opposed to the "not so-serious, just kinda underhanded fraud" office?

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. Well, yes. Someone forging the signature on a check for £50 is also fraud

but the SFO doesn't deal with that, the local police station does. When it's millions or billions, you have a specialised unit for it.

[orpupilofnature57]

4. Toni has drawn the water from that well ,WELL

[Benhurst]

5. Oh, Tony, Tony, Tony.

You're a miserable excuse for a man.

Come on, Labour. Flush :hurts: the nasty little turd.

[lovuian]

6. Truth is coming out on Saudis

Saudis are so screwed By Bush & Blair

[acmavm]

7. This is strange. I don't know what to think. The Saudi royal family

needs bribes? I mean, they aren't obscenely wealthy as it is? And they think that the fact that they're so greedy and corrupt is reason enough for one country to hid bigtime illegal shennanigans.

Maybe the Saudi people won't be so damn happy to find out how their rulers operate.

[NMDemDist2]

8. didn't I read Blair has plans to "retire" to the Carlyle Group? wonder

if this will change the plan?

[1932]

9. Yeah. You read it on DU. I've never seen that claim substantiated, though.

[orpupilofnature57]

16. Instead of being up some pop stars but ,MSM should start following key govt

figures when they leave public life ,it's probably more fascinating ,not to mention pertinent.

[UpInArms]

19. here's a bit from the Whoreshington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/08/AR2006090801606.html

Sunday, September 10, 2006; Page B02

That something else is likely to be on this side of the Atlantic, where Blair is in greater demand than back home and would probably earn more money -- a real concern for a man who likes the good life and must pay off a mortgage on a $6 million London townhouse. Indeed, if the London papers and rumor mills are to be believed, establishment Washington institutions such as the Carlyle Group or Georgetown University -- where Blair delivered a major foreign-policy speech in May -- could be seeking his services.

[davidwparker]

10. We can't get off oil fast enough for me. I'd like to see the house of Saud

come crashing down and the royal family hauled off in chains by some enemy.

[stillcool]

11. I don't get it....

Who got what from whom, and for what?

The sources said the accounts relate to substantial payments between “third party” offshore companies that may have received large sums in previously undisclosed “commissions”. Fraud office sources say they are now trying to get more documents that will tell them who benefited from the accounts. The trail is said to lead to the Saudi capital Riyadh.

A defence official said that the preliminary contract, signed last August, to sell the first 24 of 72 promised Typhoons, better known as Eurofighters, was then temporarily suspended. That contract alone is said to be worth £11 billion and would safeguard 9,000 jobs at the Eurofighter’s UK headquarters in Warton, Lancashire, for the next decade.

Downing Street is said to have persuaded the Saudis to reverse for the time being their decision to suspend the Typhoon payments. However, the Saudis made clear they would carry out their threats unless the demands in their letter were met.

Al-Yamamah, meaning “the Dove” in Arabic, has kept BAE in business for 20 years. It was signed in 1985 when Britain agreed to sell 72 Tornados and 30 Hawks to Saudi Arabia.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. Members of the Saudi royal family got the bribes; Mark Thatcher is involved

for OKing the contracts, which were paid with the Saudi Arabian state's money.They don't quite get to do whatever they want with all of their country's money, so this is a way for them to supplement their already large income.

A good overall piece on this from The Guardian 3 weeks ago:

The government was yesterday scrambling to recover secret documents containing evidence suggesting corrupt payments were made in Britain's biggest arms deal. The documents, published in full today by the Guardian, detail for the first time how the price of Tornado warplanes was inflated by £600m in the 1985 Al Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia. A telegram with the details from the head of the Ministry of Defence's sales unit had been placed in the National Archives. Yesterday it was hastily withdrawn by officials who claimed its release had been "a mistake".

Sir Colin Chandler's telegram was sent from Riyadh, where he was arranging the sale of 72 Tornados and 30 Hawk warplanes on behalf of the British arms firm BAE. It revealed that their cost had been inflated by nearly a third in a deal with Saudi defence minister Prince Sultan.

Sultan, who is crown prince, "has a corrupt interest in all contracts", according to a dispatch from the then British ambassador Willie Morris published in a recent Commons committee report. An accompanying Ministry of Defence briefing paper prepared for the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher describes Prince Sultan as "not highly intelligent ... He has prejudices, is inflexible and imperious, and drives a hard bargain". The Al Yamamah deal, worth £43bn in total, has long been the subject of allegations of secret commissions to Lady Thatcher's son Mark, and to several members of the Saudi royal family. All those involved have always denied the allegations.

The telegram from Sir Colin, now the head of budget airline easyJet, was unearthed by Nicholas Gilby, an anti-arms trade campaigner. After the Guardian showed it to the Ministry of Defence, officials were dispatched to the archives in Kew, where they loaded the files into a van and returned them to Whitehall's vaults. Campaigners had already copied all the papers and are planning to publish them on the internet.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foi/story/0,,1933764,00.html

[stillcool]

22. Let me see if I get this right...

the contract is awarded by the government for weapons made for another country. It is not between the arms maker and the country, but between the arms maker and the government? So money lavished on the Saudis' by the contractor is illegal because it's like low-balling the bid to get the contract?

BAE Systems PLC of Farnborough, UK; CEO: Mike Turner
Military contracts in 2005: $5.6 billion
Defense-related contributions in the 2004 election cycle (by its North American subsidiary, BAE Systems Inc.): $486,734
Products: Gun and missile systems, infantry fighting vehicles, military fighter aircraft

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. I'm not sure what distinction between 'country' and 'government' you make

The Saudi government, consisting largely of members of its royal family, controls lots of money, from oil revenues. That money is meant to be used for the country of Saudi Arabia. They accepted contracts to buy arms from BAE in which the government paid too much money, in return for bribes paid by BAE to the government members. It's also thought that other parties, possibly Margaret Thatcher's son Mark (this started when she was PM), got bribes from BAE.

[stillcool]

24. The distinction is between ...

the country of Great Britain and the company of BAE. Nothing to do with the Saudis' ...the only harm done was to other defense contractors. No?

[muriel_volestrangler]

27. No; the harm was done to the subjects of Saudi Arabia

They paid £600m more than they should have for their armaments. The article says bribery is illegal in Saudi Arabia, but it happened - that's why the Saudi government wants this covered up. That's 0.4% of their current GDP - the equivalent of over $50 billion in the USA. Wouldn't you be concerned if the US government had overpaid by $50 billion in the 1980s for some armaments, because someone bribed Ronald Reagan's government?

[stillcool]

28. yes...I would.....

..but, I wouldn't expect another country to investigate the US government's purchase contracts. That's the part I don't get...but, thank you for taking the time to help me understand. Sometimes I can be dense, and this seems like one of them.

[muriel_volestrangler]

29. Because British laws may have been broken as well

Much may hinge on the timing of the alleged payments. In this country, it did not become a criminal offence to bribe foreign officials until 2002. Most of the transactions in question took place in the 1990s, so BAE might not have a case to answer even if they were 'payments for contracts'.

But pre-2002 laws existed against domestic corruption, and the SFO will want to know whether any such payments were made inside the UK. It will also want to check claims that one or two payments may have been made after the 2002 law came into force. And how BAE recorded the transfers is also of key importance, since at the moment the SFO is primarily concerned with possible false accounting.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1345223,00.html

There could have been false accounting in BAE; and civil servants and/or the Prime Minister's son may have been bribed in return for the UK government securing the contract with the Saudi government.

[grahamhgreen]

12. "have also threatened to cut intelligence co-operation with Britain over Al-Qaeda."

Who's your daddy?

[gratuitous]

13. Wow, the masks are slipping fast, aren't they?

Corruption, payoffs, bribes, shady business deals, arms shipments. I wonder if any of this money might be traced back to Iraq's oil? Anyone know how much oil is being produced by Iraqi wells? Who's shipping it? Who's paying for it? Where those payments, if they're being made, are going? And who's getting (you should pardon the expression) greased when the oil is delivered?

My goodness, Mr. Blair. Let the SFO do it job, or lose a significant stream of corrupt income. This certainly is a pickle!

[Wiley50]

31. It's Impossible to Know How Much Oil Is Coming Out of Iraq

I read that they didn't install meters on the valves
used to load Iraqi oil onto tankers.

So who knows?

The volume of the tankers maybe?

That's still pretty imprecise.

[rateyes]

17. Considering the Bush family's ties to the Royal Family...

in Saudi Arabia, I would venture to guess that they have their finger in this pie, too. Another reason Blair would go against the wishes of his country to keep supporting Dubya in the Iraq war. Drain the swamp.

[conscious evolution]

18. That was my first thought,too

[Copperred]

20. hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[orpupilofnature57]

21. BanDA BUSH knows, I bet.

[leesa]

25. Don't piss off SA, Tony, they'll spill the beans on 9-11.

[starroute]

26. There's a long article at this link with background

The information in this article goes back to the 80's and 90's -- but it doesn't seem like much has changed.

http://www.caat.org.uk/publications/countries/saudi-arabia.php

The UK-Saudi contract was finally signed on 9 February 1986 and was given the name Al Yamamah, 'the Dove'. It was now valued at £5bn, for which sum Saudi Arabia would receive 72 Tornados, 30 Hawk advanced trainers and 30 Swiss licensed Pilatus PC-9 trainers. . . . Corruption is not reserved for high-profile 'one-offs' – it seems more than likely that it has played an important role in Al Yamamah from the very beginning. It is common knowledge that large contracts cannot be won from Saudi Arabia without payments which can be described as bribes or commissions. . . .

Allegations of corruption persisted and it became clear in 1994 that it was not just Saudi intermediaries who profited from the commissions system, as accusations of bribery were now directed against employees of UK companies. The Guardian published an article in which Sir Colin Southgate, Chairman of Thorn EMI, "admitted to paying huge commissions" of 25 per cent on a £40m Saudi arms deal in which more than 40,000 fuse assemblies for Tornado bombers were ordered by the RSAF in 1990 and delivered through BAe in 1991 . . .

It was also in 1994 that scandal erupted around the former Prime Minister's son, Mark Thatcher, much of it based on allegations made by the Saudi dissident, Mohammed Khilewi (Independent, 10.10.94; Guardian, 14.10.94; Sunday Telegraph, 16.10.94). As Anthony Sampson commented at the time, "with the huge sums at stake, it would be surprising if some money did not find its way to the British side. . . .

The Sunday Business reported that when John Major appointed Aitken Minister for Defence Procurement in 1992, he would have known that Aitken had been forced to resign and also "ministerial vetting would have told him that the MP enjoyed good business relations with Saudi princes" (Sunday Business, 1.6.97). The Guardian and World in Action alleged that Aitken's business relationship with Said Ayas and Prince Mohammed continued after this appointment, and even later when Aitken became Chief Secretary to the Treasury. In particular it was claimed that in September 1993 he had a secret meeting in Paris with Ayas and Prince Mohammed, who had paid his bill at the Ritz hotel. Since this would have been a clear breach of the rules of ministerial conduct, Aitken brought an action for libel. The case collapsed when detective work by The Guardian proved that he had lied on oath about the bill, and he was subsequently imprisoned for perjury.

On edit: There's even an Iran-Contra connection: "Colonel Oliver North, a US official involved in these negotiations, now devised a new scheme: sophisticated weaponry would be covertly supplied, not to the opposition, but to the Iranian government, in return for the release of US hostages held by pro-Iranian guerrillas in Lebanon. . . . According to Swiss and US sources, one of the companies that organised the deal, Hyde Park Holdings, was allegedly linked with Mohammed Said Ayas, who ran the financial affairs of Prince Mohammed bin Fahd Al Saud and was a "close family friend" of Jonathan Aitken."

[JohnyCanuck]

30. I understand that the Saudi government doesn't need

all these armaments in the first place, but it's all part of the quid pro quo. You guys (ie. the West) help prop up our corrupt government and help us fight off the Islamic fundamentalist rabble rousers wanting to do us in, and we'll keep the oil flowing for you and recycle some of the immense profits from oil sales back into your military-industrial complex by buying way more high-tech weaponry than we really need and for which we don't really have the trained personnel to operate it anyway.