The Court of Appeal has reversed a conviction of Aberdeen oil executive Stephen Whiteley - the third such reversal for cases stemming from the Unaoil scandal.
A court had previously found him guilty of paying bribes of $500,000 to Iraqi officials in order to win a $55m contract for Unaoil to supply oil infrastructure.
After being found guilty in 2020, Whiteley was ordered to repay criminal gains of almost £100,000.
But a review into the conduct of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has led to the Court of Appeal quashing his case, following similar results for other former Unaoil and SBM Offshore executives linked to it.
Sam Healey, a partner at JMW Solicitors who represented him, said the case had been the catalyst for health concerns, as well as causing “immense financial strain“ which “weighed heavily on his partner and the rest of his family“.
An SFO representative said the agency had not contested the appeal. “Our investigation into Unaoil uncovered the payment of $17m in bribes that were paid to win contracts worth $1.7bn in Iraq and we’re proud to have exposed this serious wrongdoing,” read the statement.
Two reports into the failures of the SFO make for “sobering read”, its director Lisa Osofsky said.
Sir David Calvert-Smith’s review gave 11 recommendations for her agency to respond to.
Osofsky was involved in the Unaoil case via her contacts with ex-US Drug Enforcement Agency agent David Tinsley, the founder and chair of private-investigation firm 5 Stones Intelligence, who acted as a “fixer” for other parties in the case.
The SFO’s failure to disclose the extent of its contacts with Tinsley saw convictions in the case overturned and the agency admonished for its conduct by a senior judge.
The Court of Appeal freed Paul Bond in March and Ziad Akle last December, with the court ruling the latter conviction as unsafe. Bond was a senior sales manager at SBM Offshore, while Akle was Unaoil’s Iraq manager.
Akle’s lawyers said the initial guilty plea had stemmed improperly from the SFO’s relationship with Tinsley. The initial trial in 2019 sought disclosure of the SFO’s contact Tinsley, with the review revealing that the agency’s legal team was concerned about airing its “dirty laundry” in public.
Attorney General Suella Braverman launched a review of the SFO’s conduct in February.
The review found the SFO had not formally adhered to expectations in how it handled casework on the Unaoil case and limited formal record-keeping. For instance, Osofsky took no formal notes of meetings with Tinsley.
Braverman stated that the SFO has developed a clear plan of action. “I will be closely monitoring the SFO’s progress and delivery of that plan and will provide an update to Parliament in November 2022 and February 2023,” she said.
Osofsky described the review as sobering.
“The SFO of today is already not the same organisation I inherited - while the expertise and determination of our committed staff remains steadfast, a new senior leadership team has prioritised investment in technology, introduced a stringent case prioritisation system and we have embedded a change programme to overhaul the SFO’s working practices and culture,” she said.
Commenting on the case and review, Dr Susan Hawley, executive director at Spotlight on Corruption, said: ”This is a grim day for the SFO - the catalogue of errors laid out in the Calvert Smith review shows that the quashing of yet another conviction in the Unaoil case was entirely avoidable.
”Lack of proper resourcing, outdated technology, and poor management at the agency is leading to over-stretched case teams, poor quality assurance on cases, and disclosure failures.
”We also need ambitious thinking about building greater oversight and accountability at the agency, not to the Attorney General, who is a political appointee, but to an independent panel that can provide a robust challenge function.”
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