‘No-one is entitled to interfere with our justice’

[the ringmaster]

Read the following in the herald........... A High Court judge accused Downing Street of "a failure of government" and the Saudi royal family of perverting the course of justice by colluding to block a bribery investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into the £43bn Al Yamamah arms deal.

Lord Justice Moses yesterday said the director of the SFO had capitulated to threats from the Saudi royal family over the deals with BAE Systems, Europe's biggest defence company.

"No-one, whether within this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice. The rule of law is nothing if it fails to constrain overweening power," he told the High Court in London.

"The law is powerless to resist the specific and, as it turns out, successful attempt by a foreign government to pervert the course of justice in the United Kingdom," Lord Moses added.

He and his fellow review judge also ruled that the SFO had acted illegally by halting its two-year inquiry into allegations that Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan had received up to £1bn in payments from a BAE "slush fund" set up to buy influence on lucrative aerospace contracts.

It is claimed that the Saudi diplomat used two embassy accounts under his control in the US to receive backhander payments while he was serving as his kingdom's ambassador to Washington.

The US Justice Department is now conducting its own investigation into the affair under America's anti-bribery laws and is understood to have asked for the co-operation of Swiss authorities over bank accounts there to which Bandar also had access.

The biggest arms deal in history, worth £43bn, was signed on a government-to-government basis between the UK and the Saudis against stiff French and US competition in 1985.

A further deal for an immediate £4.4bn-worth of new Eurofighter Typhoon jets and a possible long-term £40bn order for another 130 aircraft and through-life maintenance, training and spares package is also being negotiated.

When the SFO investigation was stopped two years ago on Downing Street's orders, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair defended the decision, arguing it would damage Britain's national security to pursue the issue.

Anti-arms trade campaigners claimed there was "very large-scale bribery" of senior Saudi officials by BAE, and said the probe was halted because of threats that the Saudis would cancel orders, undermining British jobs.

The judges allowed the challenge to the SFO decision by the Corner House Research Group and the Campaign Against Arms Trade to go ahead last November.

"This was the most extreme example so far of the levels to which the government will go to promote the interests of BAE regardless of the public interest," a Campaign Against Arms Trade spokesman said yesterday.

"The SFO are carefully considering the implications of the judgment and the way forward," an SFO spokeswoman added.

A BAE spokeswoman said: "The case was between two campaign groups and the director of the SFO. It concerned the legality of a decision made by the director of the SFO. BAE Systems played no part in that decision."

LibDem leader Nick Clegg said last night: "This ruling confirms what we have said all along. The government was completely wrong to drop this inquiry into serious fraud allegations.

"The investigation was blocked supposedly to protect our security, but it looks increasingly like it was done to protect BAE sales."

[the ringmaster]

Surely the Goverment must reopen the investigation into alleged bribery involving BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia