On the day of the Court of Appeal’s judgment in the Unaoil case, the Attorney General Suella Braverman has commissioned an independent review of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) failings identified in the case, including disclosure failings.
Sir David Calvert-Smith - a former director of public prosecutions and High Court judge who has led several independent reviews including one into racism within the police service - will lead this review.
The review will look at what went wrong in the Unaoil case and what changes are needed at the SFO to ensure that the failings identified in the judgment cannot happen again, especially in relation to contact with third-parties and disclosure.
It will seek to answer the following questions:
- What happened in this case and why? In particular, the review will assess the two key failings identified in the judgment: a) What occurred as regards SFO contact with third-parties and why; and b) Why did the SFO disclosure failures identified in the Court of Appeal judgment occur?
- What implications, if any, do the failings highlighted by this case have for the policies, practices, procedures and related culture of the SFO?
- What changes are necessary to address the failings highlighted by the judgment and any wider issues of SFO policies, practices, procedures or related culture identified by the reviewer?
In December, a British businessman jailed for five years over a multimillion-dollar bribery plot to secure oil infrastructure contracts in Iraq has had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal.
Ziad Akle was convicted over a conspiracy to pay out bribes totalling £4.9m to politicians and state-owned companies after Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003.
Last summer, he was found guilty of two counts of conspiracy to make corrupt payments in a prosecution brought by the SFO.
Akle was convicted for his alleged role in the conspiracy alongside Stephen Whiteley, Basil Al-Jarah and Paul Bond.
At a hearing in October, he challenged his conviction and his sentence at the Court of Appeal. Three senior judges then overturned his conviction two months later.
US citizen David Tinsley had acted as a “fixer” for the founder of Unaoil, British-Iranian Ata Ahsani, and his two sons. Tinsley had contact with the director of the SFO, Lisa Osofsky, and indicated to the agency that he had contacted Akle and Al-Jarah in order to discuss their pleas.
At the time, Lord Justice Holroyde said: “The SFO knew of the contact and of the fruits of Tinsley’s efforts - it should have been engaging only with the legal representatives of Basil Al-Jarah and Akle and should have had nothing to do with David Tinsley.”
The three senior judges later found that the SFO “failed fundamentally” to provide documents that “had a clear potential to embarrass the SFO in their prosecution of this case” when Akle attempted to dismiss his prosecution as an abuse of process.
Quashing the conviction, Holroyde said it was “wholly inappropriate” for the SFO to have contact with Tinsley in relation to Akle’s plea. The judges refused to order a retrial.
Calvert-Smith will have the support of a small team, including Anthony Rogers, the deputy chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (which inspects the SFO).
He will aim to report to the Attorney General by the end of May, who will then update Parliament on his findings and the UK Government’s response.
“I announced this review on the day of the judgment as it was clear to me that swift action was needed - we must ensure lessons are learned so that the failings we saw in the Unaoil case can never happen again,” stated the Attorney General.
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