Al Jazeera: Trail of the Dove - Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iuFyWX3Rz8 Al Jazeera: Trail of the Dove - Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jIPMQSpiiE Al Jazeera: Trail of the Dove - Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dclFejuvrwg An exclusive interview with one of Britain's leading investigative journalists and a former insider, the Trail of the Dove reveals the extent of surcharges, commissions and the $100 millon secret fund used by the UK's leading arms firm, BAE Systems, to grease the wheels of the biggest arms deals in British history.
Al-Yamamah 'The Dove' is the name of a series of massive arms sales by the United Kingdom to Saudi Arabia. It is Britain's largest ever export agreement, and the prime contractor has been BAE Systems and its predecessor British Aerospace, which earned £43 billion in 20 years.
Both the UK's National Audit Office (report never released) and The Serious Fraud Office (halted) conducted investigations into corruption allegations. Trail of the Dove has also had access to ministry of defence secret documents and ambassadorial official correspondence that shows the level of corruption in the British arms trade.
New Labour - Old sleaze - Saudis and BAE blackmail Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tibaAAS5Zk New Labour - Old sleaze - Saudis and BAE blackmail Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMnIBMm9HBQ New Labour - Old sleaze - Saudis and BAE blackmail Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEwJ72VCrzI NOW WE KNOW WHY:- Tony Blair has defended the government's decision to halt the Serious Fraud Office's (SFO) investigation into alleged bribery surrounding BAE Systems' contracts with Saudi Arabia.
The prime minister told the House of Commons continuing the investigation would have damaged the UK's relationship with Saudi Arabia.
However, he refuted allegations the attorney general Lord Goldsmith had attempted to block a subsequent Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) investigation as "completely and totally unfair and wrong".
It had been alleged Lord Goldsmith had warned officials not to disclose information to the OECD investigation.
Quizzed in prime minister's questions, Mr Blair defended the decision not to pursue an inquiry.
He said: "First of all these allegations are strenuously denied by the Saudi royal family, secondly if we were then going to conduct an investigation then that might last two, three years into these allegations that frankly I think would lead absolutely nowhere.
"What it would lead to is the complete wreckage of a relationship that is of fundamental importance of the security of this country, to the state of the Middle East, and to our relationship with countries in the Middle East."
Mr Blair continued: "I was asked for my advice as to what damage this investigation would do if it continued. I gave that advice because of the huge importance of working with Saudi Arabia on the Middle East peace process, on counter-terrorism, on the situation in the Middle East.
"I stick by that, and the idea frankly that such an investigation could be conducted without doing damage to our relationship is cloud cuckoo land, which after all is the natural habitat of the Liberal Democrats."
The Liberal Democrats have called on Mr Blair to confirm what he knew about the alleged bribery and when -- noting that bribery of a foreign official became illegal in 2002.
Since 1985, BAE Systems has signed £43 billion worth of arms contract with Saudi Arabia. But it was alleged these were agreed in return for payments totalling £1 billion to Prince Bander.
The government halted a SFO investigation in December 2006 and the case has since been investigated by the OECD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWwdJpJkyKg Former Saudi Ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan received hundreds of millions of pounds in secret payments from Britain's top defence manufacturer with the knowledge of Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, according to the BBC.
The payments made by BAE Systems were actually a conduit to Bandar for his role in the multi-billion al-Yamamah arms agreement, Britain's biggest ever export deal signed in 1985, the state-funded broadcaster said it had learned Thursday.
The alleged bribes were said to have been discovered during a year-long inquiry conducted by Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO), but which was abruptly halted last December after Blair said the investigation was a threat to national security.
The dropping of the investigation also came amid concerns that it might jeopardize a new multi-billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia to supply Eurofighters.
The BBC said that the payments, believed to total more than Pnds one billion (Dlrs 1.9 bn), were sent to two Saudi embassy accounts in Washington, were written into the government-to-government arms deal contract in secret annexes.
Allegations previously made in the British press have also suggested that Mark Thatcher, son of the British prime minister at the time, was also involved in the deal.
The al-Yamamah deal included the supply of more than 100 Tornado aircraft and is estimated to have been worth over Pnds 40 billion (Dlrs 78 bn) over more than a decade.
The new claims, to be made in the BBC's current affairs Panorama programme next Monday prompted the head of parliament's committee which investigates strategic exports, Labour MP Roger Berry, to call for a proper investigation into the allegations.
Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said that if ministers in either the present or previous governments were involved there should be a "major parliamentary inquiry".
"It is one thing for a company to have engaged in alleged corruption overseas. It is another thing if British government ministers have approved it," Cable said. (more) (less)
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