SFO contests Saudi deal decision

[dipsydoodle]

Source: BBC News

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has begun an appeal against the ruling that it acted unlawfully in dropping its investigation into a Saudi arms deal.

The SFO argued that national security would have been undermined if it had continued with its corruption inquiry.
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The Saudi government had threatened to withdraw its co-operation on diplomatic and intelligence matters if the inquiry continued. It was also reported that a further £23bn order could be in jeopardy.

The High Court ruled in April this year that the decision to end the investigation represented an "abject surrender" to pressure from a foreign government.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7492745.stm

[xchrom]

1. the saudi's are friends only to themselves. nt

[leveymg]

2. How many remember that Khashoggi gave Nixon millions, and Northrop and Lockheed matched those funds?

The BAE-Yamamah slush fund scandal in the UK is nothing new, nor is it really a British scandal.

The Saudis and US defense contractors have been kicking back billions into GOP dirty-tricks operations since the early 1970s. The Church Committee's discovery of Saudi contributions to CREEP -- money from accounts set up Northrop to bribe the Saudis going to Katzenbach (Nixon's lawyer) --actually triggered the Watergate investigation. See, Ronald Kessler, "Khashoggi: The Rise and Fall of the World's Richest Man", 184-191,(1986)


Nixon and Kissinger lunch at the Pentagon with Adnan Khashoggi (1972)

Bilions have been laundered through Swiss, Luxemborg, and other off-shore numbered accounts. Kessler also makes some interesting references to Khashoggi's relationship with Howard Hughes, and an account set up with Bebe Rebozzo's Key Biscayne Bank to pay Khashoggi's expenses at the Sands Hotel (p. 191). That's right, Saudi money supplemented by US defense contractors going through Nixon's banker to pay Meyer Lansky.



Today, we see The Sands is owned by Sheldon Adelson, CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corporation and the third-richest American. Adelson is one of the deepest pockets behind Freedom's Watch, which bankrolled a $15 million ad buy that backed The Surge last year.

Freedoms Watch's board overlaps the Republican Jewish Coalition, AEI, and AIPAC, another favorite Adelson "charity". See, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/30/080630fa_fact_bruck The current project is to push the US into yet another disastrous war in the Middle East, this time, Iran. Gee, who might benefit from that, as they have from five years of war with Iraq and seven years of contracting for the GWOT? Does Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed Martin ring a bell, anyone?

The GOP has had deep ties to the Mob since Meyer Lansky decided he'd bankroll the Republicans in 1944, the same year he launched Bugsy Siegel's Nevada adventure.

No wonder McCain loves to gamble.

[Taverner]

3. Oh I thought Bushco was selling SFO (the airport) to the Saudis

And let the Bin Laden Company handle airport security