Britain’s biggest-ever arms deal faces renewed scrutiny after Saudi Arabia placed it at the centre of an urgent criminal investigation as part of the kingdom’s anti-corruption drive.
One of the hundreds of princes, ministers and businessmen held in the country’s unprecedented purge of senior figures is Prince Turki bin Nasser, the royal at the centre of the so-called al-Yamamah scandal, The Times has been told.
The Saudi decision to investigate the £43 billion deal created political pressure last night for Britain to reopen its investigation into al-Yamamah, which was halted in 2006 on the orders of Tony Blair, prime minister at the time.
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“The ugly truth behind this was never revealed,” Sir Vince said. “It is embarrassing that Saudi Arabia is now leading us on transparency. The Serious Fraud Office should reopen this case. The Foreign Office and SFO must also fully co-operate with this investigation. It is almost a decade since I sought thorough debates in parliament to have this properly investigated, but the government of the day and the official opposition sought to maintain secrecy.”
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The al-Yamamah deal involved the sale of arms, particularly fighter planes, by BAE Systems, the former British Aerospace, to Saudi Arabia over two decades from the 1980s. The series of contracts was sealed with huge support from the government of Margaret Thatcher. But the path was also allegedly smoothed by multimillion- dollar “commissions” to middlemen, most notably Prince Turki, a former deputy head of the Saudi Royal Air Force.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/saudi-purge-may-lift-lid-on-43bn-bae-arms-deal-ppx7l72l7
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