Quand un prince saoudien menace de rendre plus facile une attaque
terroriste sur Londres si les investigations sur l'affaire BAE ne sont pas
interrompues.
BAE: secret papers reveal threats from Saudi
prince
The Guardian, Friday February 15 2008
"Spectre of 'another 7/7' led Tony Blair to block bribes inquiry, high court
told
Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to
attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were
halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.
Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced
"another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they
pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut
off intelligence.
Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of
the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold
back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations
that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company
BAE.
He was accused in yesterday's high court hearings of flying to London in
December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair,
force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations
involving Bandar and his family.
The threats halted the fraud inquiry, but triggered an international outcry,
with allegations that Britain had broken international anti-bribery
treaties.
Lord Justice Moses, hearing the civil case with Mr Justice Sullivan, said
the government appeared to have "rolled over" after the threats. He said one
possible view was that it was "just as if a gun had been held to the head" of
the government.
The SFO investigation began in 2004, when Robert Wardle, its director,
studied evidence unearthed by the Guardian. This revealed that massive secret
payments were going from BAE to Saudi Arabian princes, to promote arms
deals.
Yesterday, anti-corruption campaigners began a legal action to overturn the
decision to halt the case. They want the original investigation restarted,
arguing the government had caved into blackmail.
The judge said he was surprised the government had not tried to persuade the
Saudis to withdraw their threats. He said: "If that happened in our
jurisdiction [the UK], they would have been guilty of a criminal offence".
Counsel for the claimants said it would amount to perverting the course of
justice.
Wardle told the court in a witness statement: "The idea of discontinuing the
investigation went against my every instinct as a prosecutor. I wanted to see
where the evidence led."
But a paper trail set out in court showed that days after Bandar flew to
London to lobby the government, Blair had written to the attorney general, Lord
Goldsmith, and the SFO was pressed to halt its investigation..."
Sur l'affaire BAE, voir : The BAE files
En français, voir : Wikipedia
