Corruption is a Crime

A new BBC investigation has found evidence that the Ministry of Defence had full knowledge of secret payments running into hundreds of millions of pounds made by BAE to a Saudi Arabian prince:

BAE Systems made regular payments of hundreds of millions of pounds to Prince Bandar bin Sultan for more than a decade … Up to £120m a year was sent by BAE from the UK into two Saudi embassy accounts in Washington for more than a decade. The BBC’s Panorama programme has established that these accounts were actually a conduit to Prince Bandar, the architect of the 1980s Al Yamamah deal to sell warplanes to Saudi.

Liberal Democrat MP Vince Cable has called for an urgent inquiry into these revelations:

It increasingly looks as if the motives behind the decision to pull the SFO inquiry were less to do with UK national interests but more to do with the personal interests of one of two powerful Saudi ministers … Tony Blair’s claims that the government has been motivated by national security considerations look increasingly hollow.