....for favors and access. Looks like the Saudi house of cards may weeble wobble and tumble.
<snip>
Blair: No new BAE probe despite bribe claims
By Toby Helm in Heiligendamm
Last Updated: 1:59am BST 08/06/2007Tony Blair has dismissed calls to reopen an investigation into a 1980s arms deal as new allegations surfaced that £1 billion in secret "sweetener" payments were made to a Saudi Prince.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan is alleged to have accepted 'sweetener' payments
According to the BBC and the Guardian newspaper, the money was allegedly sent by BAE systems - the UK’s biggest arms manufacturer - to Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the US, over a period of at least a decade in the full knowledge of the Ministry of Defence.
It is claimed to have related to the £40 billion Al Yamamah contract with Saudi Arabia to supply Tornado and Hawk jets, as well as a major airbase construction programme.
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Investigations claim to have found that the accounts were a "conduit" to Prince Bandar, who used one of them to run his private jet which clocked up thousands of miles each year. The SFO was said to have uncovered details of the payments at the time of its investigation but had not established whether they were illegal.
No one from the Saudi embassy in London was immediately available to comment on the claims.
An MoD spokesman said: "The MoD is unable to comment on these allegations since to do so would involve disclosing confidential information about Al Yamamah and that would cause the damage that ending the investigation was designed to prevent."
However, Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, called for a reopening of the SFO investigation and said that if ministers in either the present or previous governments were involved there should be a "major parliamentary inquiry".
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/07/wbae107.xml 
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