"British lives on British streets" threatened by Saudi prince Bandar if UK proceeded with BAE fraud inquiry. The Guardian's investigative team David Leigh and Rob Evans, who broke the BAE/Saudi bribery/halted UK corruption inquiry story last year, have a new blockbuster, and it's bloodcurdling:

Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.

Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.

Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.

He was accused in yesterday's high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family.

The threats halted the fraud inquiry, but triggered an international outcry, with allegations that Britain had broken international anti-bribery treaties.

Lord Justice Moses, hearing the civil case with Mr Justice Sullivan, said the government appeared to have "rolled over" after the threats. He said one possible view was that it was "just as if a gun had been held to the head" of the government. ...

Some of the court documents (.pdf) and highlighted excerpts. That regime has held a gun at all of our heads for a long time, and what to do about it is something one hopes the next administration will seriously review, with more creativity and flexibility and discipline and perhaps ruthlessness than has been shown in the past. Maybe it takes cutting a deal with Iran, one correspondent, no softy on the Iran threat, suggests. The $20 billion in arms sales to Riyadh US defense firms just secured on Bush's recent trip there are central to the problem too, and their armies of lobbyists, white-shoe law firms and bought officials and think tanks here as well, so institutionalized they have become part of the marble firmament of this corrupted city. In the meantime, maybe Bandar should lose his White House and Crawford pass?

Update: For instance, see this court statement (.pdf) by Robert Wardle, director of the UK’s Serious Fraud Office, dated 31 January 2008, about why he ultimately felt compelled to shut down his investigation: because Bandar threatened Tony Blair to cease cooperating with the UK on counterterrorism and threatened there would be more terrorist attacks on Britain:

21. It was only following my first meeting with the Ambassador (Bandar) on 30 November 2006 that I seriously began to entertain the thought that the national security public interest might be so compelling that I would have no real alternative. Ultimately, I was convinced by my discussions with the Ambassador and the Prime Minister’s minute that there was a very real likelihood of serious damage to UK national security. 22. Following my first meeting with the Ambassador I considered inviting BAE to plead guilty to certain offences, in the hope that it would be possible to avoid serious damage to UK national security without the need to drop the case. But following further discussions with the Ambassador, and the Prime Minister’s minute, it became apparent to me that unless I stopped the investigation it was likely that UK national security would be seriously damaged and lives would be put at risk. 23. I spent a considerable period of time considering the competing public interests, and discussing them with Helen Garlick, Matthew Cowie and counsel. Ultimately, I concluded that the public interest in pursuing the investigation was outweighed by the risk to people’s lives.

Though Blair did shut down the investigation, the Guardian investigation revealed with documents that BAE had paid approximately one billion pounds in bribes to Bandar through US bank accounts. How BAE still manages to operate in Washington (doesn't one see it when one drives on 66 in northern Virginia?) when there doesn't seem to be much doubt it's violated the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is curious. In the same time period in late 2006 that Bandar was holding the gun to Blair's head he was also, it's worth remembering, visiting the White House for secret consultations with Elliot Abrams and Vice President Cheney on Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. It's also worth remembering, the number one source of foreign suicide bombers in Iraq is Saudi Arabia, a fact that has never got the kind of robust policy response from Washington one would expect. So they arrest a few terrorists from time to time when they're not creating them and letting them out, they buy $20 billion in US arms to help repatriate the petrodollars, they take a few of the most outrageous teachings out of their textboks, they supply some arms and training to counter Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, and perhaps Bandar deigns to whisper secretly in Olmert's ear in Amman, and Washington considers they've gotten cooperation. What a mess. Posted by Laura at February 15, 2008 10:04 AM