British businessmen found guilty of £4.9m Iraq oil deals bribery plot

LONDON: Two British businessmen have been found guilty of a six million US dollars (£4.9 million) bribery plot to win lucrative oil deals.

Ziad Akle, 45, and Stephen Whiteley, 65, were accused with a third defendant, Paul Bond, 68, of being involved in a corrupt plan to secure Iraqi contracts worth 800 million US dollars (£650.7 million) in the wake of Saddam Hussein being overthrown in 2003.

Akle was found guilty of two counts of conspiracy to make corrupt payments, and Whiteley was convicted of one count following a trial which had been halted due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The jury at the Old Bailey was unable to reach verdicts on similar charges against Bond. The verdicts can be reported after Judge Martin Beddoe lifted reporting restrictions at Southwark Crown Court on Monday.

The trial had heard that the infrastructure needed to produce and distribute crude oil in Iraq had become old and dilapidated during the Hussein regime. As part of reconstruction efforts, the Iraqi Ministry of Oil planned to increase production by acquiring three single point mooring (SPM) buoys in the Persian Gulf to allow tankers to load oil offshore.

The ministry also sought two new pipelines to take the oil by land and sea from storage tanks near the oil fields and processing facilities to the buoys.

Basra-based South Oil Company, a state-owned firm, was put in charge of the project for the ministry. One of the businesses hoping to cash in through commission was Monaco-based Unaoil, the court was told.

Unaoil allied itself with Dutch-based company SBM Offshore, which won the contract for the supply of the buoys. It also helped Singapore company Leighton Offshore to land the contract for laying the two pipelines and installation of the buoys.

In each case, it was alleged that Unaoil paid bribes to the South Oil Company’s project manager. Once recommendations to the Ministry of Oil had been obtained, Unaoil – via an intermediary – bribed senior officials at the ministry to secure the two contracts, prosecutors for the Serious Fraud Office said.

In all, Unaoil paid bribes totalling some six million US dollars (£4.9 million) for the two contracts, together worth around 800 million US dollars (£650.7 million), the court heard.In return, Unaoil was paid commission for the deals as well as the sub-contract for onshore work, the court heard. The Unaoil group was founded by British-Iranian Ata Ahsani and had its headquarters in Monaco.

Mr Ahsani’s sons, Cyrus and Saman, held senior positions within the company.The defendants were charged with conspiring to pay the bribes with the three Ahsani family members who controlled Unaoil.

At the time, Akle, from Marlyebone, London, who is a British-Lebanese national, was Unaoil’s territory manager for Iraq, and Whiteley, from Beverley, Yorkshire, was SBM vice president until May 2009 when he joined Unaoil.

Bond, who lives in the south of France, had been SBM’s sales manager for the Middle East and was closely involved in the arrangements for the sale of the three buoys, it was claimed.

A fourth man, Basil Al-Jarah, 71, from Hull, was Unaoil’s country manager for Iraq and partner in a subsidiary company. The British Iraqi, nicknamed Captain, had earlier pleaded guilty to the bribery conspiracy and awaits sentence.

None of the Ahsanis were defendants in the British trial, which had transferred from Southwark Crown Court to the Old Bailey because of the coronavirus crisis.Bond faces a retrial on the two counts the jury did not reach verdicts on.

Al-Jarah, Akle and Whiteley will be sentenced at Southwark Crown Court next week.Commenting after the reporting restrictions were lifted, Serious Fraud Office director Lisa Osofsky said: “These men dishonestly and corruptly took advantage of a government reeling from dictatorship and occupation, and trying to reconstruct a war-torn state.

“They abused the system to cut out competitors and line their own pockets. It is our mission to pursue and bring to justice those who use criminal means to weaken the integrity of business.”