this story hasn't received nearly enough coverage in the u.s...
Prince Bandar bin Sultan
of Saudi Arabia appears on
Meet the Press, April 25, 2004
item...[T]he OECD Working Group on Bribery reaffirmed its serious concerns about the United Kingdom’s discontinuance of the BAE Al Yamamah investigation and outlined continued shortcomings in UK Anti-Bribery legislation. It urged the UK to remedy these shortcomings as quickly as possible and decided to conduct a further examination of the UK’s efforts to fight bribery.
[...]
The recent discontinuance of a major foreign bribery investigation concerning BAE SYSTEMS plc and the Al Yamamah defence contract with the government of Saudi Arabia has further highlighted some of these concerns. The Working Group notes that the UK has stated that the discontinuance was based on national and international security considerations and that the matter is subject to judicial review in the UK. The Working Group underlines in this respect that bribery of foreign public officials is contrary to international public policy and distorts international competitive conditions.
does attempting to halt an investigation based on "national security" ring bells with anyone...? and we're not talking chump change here either... according to the guardian...£30m a quarter - for at least 10 years - was paid into accounts controlled by Prince Bandar at the Riggs bank in Washington.
The money was paid from an account at the Bank of England into accounts in Washington controlled by Prince Bandar. Details of the transfers were discovered by the Serious Fraud Office during the marathon investigation into BAE.
holy crap...! £30m A QUARTER...!! by current exchange rates, that's $58,968,058.97 U.S. DOLLARS EVERY THREE MONTHS...!! great god almighty...!! and OVER TEN YEARS, THAT'S £1.2 BILLION or $2.4 BILLION U.S. DOLLARS...!! DAMN...!!!
among other things, just look at what that kind of money can buy...
Glympton, Oxfordshire. The 2,000 acre manor house
and sporting estate purchased by Prince Bandar
after he arranged the al-Yamamah arms deal.
Photograph: INS News
a little history...- The British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, negotiated with Bandar to clinch the so-called al-Yamamah deal for BAE in 1985.
- Over the past 20 years, the warplane programme has brought £43bn in revenue for BAE. The deal made the career of BAE executive Dick Evans, who rose to chair the company on the strength of it.
- Police later calculated that more than £6bn may have been distributed in corrupt commissions, via an array of agents and middlemen.Newly obtained documents and our own investigations have revealed details of where the money may have gone.
- Millions went to Bandar, according to US sources. Up to $30m (£15m) at a time is alleged to have been paid into his dollar account at Riggs Bank [see below] in Washington.
- More millions were paid by BAE into Wafic Said-linked accounts in Switzerland.
- Bandar's father, Prince Sultan, was described by a British ambassador as having "a corrupt interest in all contracts".
- Legal sources say BAE disguised many of the payments by making them through an anonymous offshore company, Poseidon. Large amounts were also alleged to have been transferred in this way to Mohammed Safadi, a Lebanese politician. He acted for Sultan's son-in-law, Prince Turki bin Nasser, who controlled the Saudi air force. At least £1bn is said to have gone down the Poseidon route. More payments were allegedly disguised in inflated bills to BAE from local subcontractors.
- A relatively minor, although colourful, aspect of this torrent of cash was a £60m "slush fund" maintained by BAE to keep Prince Turki bin Nasser sweet on his visits to the west. The arms firm provided him with extravagant holidays, fleets of classic cars, planeloads of shopping and blond girlfriends. BAE claims these treats were "paid for under the contractual arrangements". But in fact bills went to the al-Yamamah contract at the MoD under the misleading phrase "support services.
- The cash for all these payoffs came, simply enough, from overcharging.
- Accidentally released UK documents [article] reveal that the basic price of the planes was inflated by 32%, to allow for an initial £600m in commissions.
in case riggs bank sounds familiar, it should...In October 2002, the directors of Riggs Bank received an internal memorandum listing $1.9 million in suspicious cash withdrawals by former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet from 2000 to 2002 -- the board's first official notification of a relationship that bank regulators were investigating.
The directors did not question the nature of the bank's relationship with Pinochet, who only a year before had eluded a Spanish criminal indictment on genocide and torture charges, according to sources who have seen minutes and transcripts of the meeting. No internal procedures were changed. The board took no action.
so, the uk and bae bribe prince bandar, who puts the money in accounts at riggs bank, which, at the time, was holding money from a brutal dictator, pinochet, and bandar is really good friends with - guess who? - the bush family... yes, it's all circumstantial, i know, but entirely TOO circumstantial to suit me...
George Bush and
Prince Bandar bin Sultanhere's craig unger writing in the boston globe back on april 11, 2004...Let's go back to Sept. 13, 2001, and look at several scenes that were taking place simultaneously. Three thousand people had just been killed. The toxic rubble of the World Trade Center was still ablaze. American airspace was locked down. Not even Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who were out of the country, were allowed to fly home. And a plane bearing a replacement heart for a desperately ill Seattle man was forced down short of its destination by military aircraft. Not since the days of the Wright Brothers had American skies been so empty.
But some people desperately wanted to fly out of the country. That same day, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States and a long-time friend of the Bush family, dropped by the White House. He and President George W. Bush went out to the Truman Balcony for a private conversation.
now, back to bandar's appearance on meet the press...Tim Russert: 140 Saudis leave the country, two days after September 11, and nobody knows who gave permission. You don't know anything about it? You didn't ask anyone for permission? You didn't facilitate it in any way? The planes were just allowed..
Prince Bandar: Tim, no, no, no. This is becoming exotic now. We had those people in the country, and a lot of them were relatives of the bin Laden family going to school, from teenagers to some people in college. And we asked the FBI, that those people are scattered all over America and with tempers high at that time, and rightly so, and we were worried that someone getting emotional would hurt them.
Tim Russert: So, who did you call for permission?
Prince Bandar: We didn't call them, we asked them, is it possible..
and, in closing, again craig unger...Never before in history has a president of the United States had such a close relationship with another foreign power as President Bush and his father have had with the Saudi royal family, the House of Saud. I have traced more than $1.4 billion in investments and contracts that went from the House of Saud over the past 20 years to companies in which the Bushes and their allies have had prominent positions -- Harken Energy, Halliburton, and the Carlyle Group among them.
gee... BILLIONS OF DOLLARS...? weren't we just discussing that at the beginning of the post...? hmmmmm... < scratches chin > nah... just conspiracy thinking...Labels: al-Yamamah, BAE, bribery, corruption, George Bush, George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, OECD, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Riggs Bank
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