Good morning. On Wednesday, two men were acquitted of paying bribes totalling millions of pounds to senior Saudis to secure and maintain a UK defence deal worth £1.6bn. In their successful defence, the men argued that they had been unfairly prosecuted, because the payments had been authorised by the British and Saudi governments.
Yesterday, the Guardian published the first tranche of a major investigation into the basis of their defence – and the story it tells about the murky relationship between the UK Ministry of Defence, the middle men and the Saudi royal family.
