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"Britain bribed Saudi Prince in arms deal"

Hasan Suroor

Calls for reopening the inquiry into the scandal

LONDON: Britain's biggest arms supplier, the BAE Systems, has been accused of secretly paying millions of pounds to a prominent member of the Saudi royal family for facilitating a £43-billion arms deal in the eighties.

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to the U.S. for 20 years and is now head of his country's National Security Council, allegedly received more than $1 billion over a period of 10 years, according to damaging revelations about Britain's longest-running arms bribery scandal.

The claims, reported by the BBC and Guardian newspaper on Thursday after separate independent investigations, provoked calls for reopening the inquiry into the scandal which was called off last December after Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed that it was not in Britain's national interest to pursue it and would damage relations with Saudi Arabia.

According to the BBC, the payments to Prince Bandar, son of Saudi Arabia's Defence Minister and is regarded as one of the most high-profile figures in the Saudi establishment, were made with the "full knowledge of the Ministry of Defence.''

Payments

It is claimed that the payments were "written into the arms deal contract in secret annexes, described as `support services'. ''

"Up to £120 million a year was sent by BAE from the U.K. into two Saudi embassy accounts in Washington. The BBC's Panorama programme has established that these accounts were actually a conduit to Prince Bandar for his role in the 1985 deal to sell more than 100 warplanes to Saudi Arabia. The purpose of one of the accounts was to pay the expenses of the Prince's private Airbus,'' it said.

Prince Bandar has declined to comment and the BAE systems insists that it "acted lawfully at all times.'' The MoD said information about the controversial arms deal, known as the Al-Yamamah deal signed during the Tory regime in 1985, was "confidential''.

The claims in the BBC Panorama programme, to be telecast on June 11, and The Guardian are almost identical, both alleging that payments were channelled through U.S. bank accounts. "BAE drew the money from a confidential account held at the Bank of England that had been set up to facilitate the Al-Yamamah deal,'' The Guardian said adding that the payments were authorised by MoD officials and Ministers under the Blair Government and its predecessors though they have consistently denied any knowledge. Secret commissions in defence contracts were banned in 2002.

The Guardian BAE investigation reports are available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/

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