Cabinet ministers and Whitehall mandarins approved payments totalling £60m to Saudi royals and high-ranking officials over decades to secure and maintain a huge arms deal, a court heard on Monday.
The accusation was made by Tom Allen, a barrister representing one of two men who are being prosecuted for corruption in a longstanding arms deal between the UK and Saudi Arabia.
Allen alleged that British politicians – including unnamed “secretaries of state and ministers” – approved, facilitated and encouraged the payments over many years to ensure that leading Saudis gave huge arms contracts to British firms.
Senior members of the British government and military figures were “absolutely in the thick” of organising the payments, a large slice of which went to a Saudi prince, he said.
He also claimed that the British and Saudi governments engaged in what he called a “deniable fiddle” to conceal the payments if they came to light.
At Southwark crown court in London, the Serious Fraud Office is prosecuting the two men, Jeffrey Cook, 67, and John Mason, 81, for authorising corrupt payments amounting to £9.7m to senior Saudis between 2007 and 2012.
The SFO alleges that the payments were made to Prince Miteb bin Abdullah and other senior Saudi officials to make sure that a British firm, GPT, secured lucrative contracts from the Saudi military.
Cook, a former Ministry of Defence civil servant, was GPT’s managing director. Mason worked for a firm that is accused of channelling the bribes to the Saudis.
On Monday, Allen, defending Cook, said he had been “hung out to dry while the government is hiding its blushes”. He alleged that a wide cast of senior British officials, including military, political and diplomatic figures, had long known about, and approved, the payments to leading Saudis.
“No one with a title, or a military rank, or a gong is standing before you,” Allen said, “but it couldn’t have happened without them”.
Allen argued that documentary evidence showed the British government had organised and approved payments amounting to £60m to the leading Saudis long before Cook became involved. He said that the payments had been put in place at the beginning of the arms deal, which was struck in 1978.
The arms deal, which is still running, involves the supply of military communications equipment to a Saudi military unit, which was at one time headed by Miteb.
Allen told the court that the Saudis had required the payments to ensure that they continue to give the arms contracts to British firms. In turn, the British government had approved “each and every penny” since 1970s, he said.
“Had the government not endorsed and approved payments in the past, the work from which the UK benefited would no doubt have never occurred,” he added. “Britain tries never to upset Saudis, because there’s so much at stake.”
Graham Brodie, the barrister defending Mason, said the British government wanted the deal to continue “because it was in the financial interests of the UK and in the strategic interests of the UK. It assisted in the maintenance of a relationship with Saudi Arabia.”
The SFO has alleged that Miteb received the largest share of the payments between 2007 and 2012, along with other Saudi officials. In its prosecution, the SFO said the payments were made through a businessman, Salah Fustok.
Allen described Fustok as a “man who was up close and personal with the British government in their dealings with Saudi Arabia for decades”. “He features meeting the high and mighty, lunching with our ambassador in Saudi Arabia right in the middle” of the period in which Cook and Mason are alleged to have organised the payments, Allen added.
Mark Heywood, leading the prosecution for the SFO, told the court that Cook and Mason “were at the very heart of the operation” and were not acting with the approval of others. “They saw to it that the millions passed on to the middlemen kept coming.”
Heywood told the jury: “You will not have to decide whether or not bribes were paid. They were, and that much will be accepted by each of these two defendants.
“The real question for you to decide will be whether it’s been proved that [each defendant] was a knowing party to the making of the payments, and that those payments were corrupt according to the law.”
The trial continues.
