The UK government is fighting to keep secret details of how it handled allegedly corrupt transactions related to a contract to equip Saudi Arabia’s national guard, saying that to disclose the information would jeopardise counter-terrorism co-operation.
Two top officials this week testified before a tribunal in London in support of the Ministry of Defence’s decision to deny parts of a freedom of information request by Richard Brooks, a journalist at Private Eye magazine, who has reported on the allegations. The refusal to reveal the information amounted to a cover-up, Mr Brooks told the three-judge panel on the tribunal.
The case, which emerged from revelations by a whistleblower, raises questions about the extent to which national security can be invoked to keep government-backed business deals secret — especially when they relate to countries where corruption is widespread but which share intelligence with the UK on terrorist activity.
In 2010 Ian Foxley, a retired British Army officer, took a job as a Saudi-based employee of GPT Special Project Management, a subsidiary of Airbus, the European arms and aerospace group. GPT had a £2bn contract to provide secure communications systems to the national guard and ran the programme under an agreement between the MoD and the Saudis.
Mr Foxley says he discovered gifts to Saudi military officials and illicit payments routed through the Cayman Islands. According to his witness statement to the tribunal, Mr Foxley provided evidence of the questionable transactions to an MoD official overseeing the project, only to be forced to flee Saudi Arabia after the MoD informed his bosses at GPT that he had raised concerns.
The UK’s Serious Fraud Office began a corruption investigation in 2012. Last year it arrested and questioned six people, including current and former GPT employees and former MoD officials. No one has been charged.
Airbus, which was known as EADS at the time it acquired GPT, said in 2013 that its own investigation into the subsidiary company had yielded no evidence of wrongdoing.
Mr Brooks is appealing a September decision by the UK information commissioner. That ruling accepted the MoD’s argument that it was exempt, because of the need to protect international relations, from disclosing information about whether it had queried or rejected payments under the GPT contract that were allegedly used to channel bribes.
Details of the latest version of the long-running national guard contract were also exempted from disclosure.
Edward Oakden, a diplomat for 33 years who specialises in the Middle East and was recently named ambassador to Jordan, told the tribunal: “I am confident that releasing these documents would cause serious harm to our relations with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” However, he conceded under questioning by Mr Brooks and by the tribunal that he had not read one of the documents in question.
Mr Oakden said that maintaining the UK government’s relationship with “a few senior [Saudi] princes” in whose hands, along with the king’s, power is concentrated, “is vital to the achievement of our national security interests, particularly counter-terrorism”. He said a Saudi tip had helped the authorities to find a “printer bomb” aboard a US-bound aircraft at East Midlands airport in 2010.
He also cited the decision taken by Tony Blair’s government in 2006 to cancel an SFO investigation into alleged corruption in BAE Systems’ £43bn al-Yamamah fighter jet deal with Saudi Arabia on national security grounds.
However, when asked by Mr Brooks whether the UK would expect Saudi Arabia to respect that “the exposure of crime and corruption is considered a good thing in this country”, Mr Oakden replied: “Yes.”
Mr Oakden’s witness statement was heavily redacted and the judges will hear much of the government’s case in private. That will include part of the evidence given by Alan Richardson, the head of commercial for information systems and services at the MoD, who said in his witness statement that revealing the information Mr Brooks requested would prejudice the UK’s relations with Saudi Arabia.
Judge Christopher Hughes, the tribunal’s chairman, denied Mr Brooks’ request to appoint a special advocate to interrogate the government’s evidence in those closed hearings.
Mr Brooks told the tribunal he was seeking information about the actions of British officials, not about the Saudis involved in the allegedly corrupt dealings — and that, in any case, several of the latter had already been named in news reports. “We are dealing with complicity in corruption in a [UK] public body,” he said.
Of the MoD’s refusal to grant parts of his freedom of information request, he added: “These were the actions of a government that wanted to avoid the questions and spare its own blushes.”
The hearing is expected to conclude on Wednesday with a ruling to follow later.
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