Court halts case into UK bribery to secure Saudi arms deal 

The trial of two middlemen at the centre of a historic bribery case involving the payment of millions of dollars by the UK to Saudi royals to secure lucrative arms deal has been halted by a UK judge. The jury at Southwark Crown Court were discharged yesterday by Judge Simon Bryan, who imposed reporting restrictions on the reasons for halting proceedings in anticipation that a retrial could take place at a later date.

The case brought by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) relates to a UK government arms deal to provide communications services to the Saudi Arabian National Guard. The services were delivered by a private contractor, British firm GPT, a now defunct unit of Airbus. SFO accused Jeffrey Cook, former managing director of GPT, and John Mason, former financial officer at two of GPT’s subcontractors, of paying £9.7 million ($11.9 million) in bribes to Saudi officials between 2007 and 2012.

At the opening of the trial in May, Ian Winter, QC for Cook, told the court that the British government approved up to £60 million ($74 million) in alleged bribes to Saudi Arabia as part of a huge arms deal over many decades and sought to conceal the payments through a controversial arrangement described as “deniable fiddle” which involves payment of bribes to Saudi officials using private contractors in order to secure major arms deal.

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Winter told the court that some of the payments were made to the then Prince Abdullah, who later became the Saudi monarch for a decade. King Abdullah died in 2015 and was succeeded by his younger brother King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. Winter also told the court that the British government had not “merely acquiesced or tolerated those payments” but “the Ministry of Defence actually required those payments to be made,” said Winter.

The main argument in defence of Cook and Mason is that they were merely carrying out orders from officials at the highest level of the UK defence ministry to pay senior individuals in the Saudi royal family.

Winter argued that his clients and the role of GPT was immaterial in the payment arrangement. He said that the MoD had set about working on creating a new system that did not involve GPT having to make the payments to senior Saudis. He alleged that the payments were moved through an offshore route by the MoD.

The indictment did “not begin to plumb the depths of what the UK government has been involved in since the late 1970s,” Winter is reported refusing to accept his client being made the fall guy for industrial scale bribery by the British government.

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