Interesting piece from BaE papers

Willie Morris, the British ambassador from 1968 to 1972, could not stand the #Saudis. They were "less lovable than some other people", he said.

The border guards were "rude". Despite their stern official religion, "one can find a minister incoherently drunk in his office before noon". Their oil billions led to a "corruption of character which enables the Saudis to regard the rest of the world as existing for their convenience", he wrote in his valedictory dispatch.

He went on:

"The Saud family regard Saudi Arabia as a family business. The sheer effrontery is breathtaking of a prince who will keep on talking about rights and wrongs, when you know (and he probably knows you know) that his cut may be 20% of the contract price."
The world of arms sales in Saudi Arabia was, he said, "crooked":

"The question of corruption is obviously crucial ... the 'system' is at best an infernal nuisance, and it is potentially explosive - a time bomb under the regime

It is a jungle inhabited by beasts of prey in which one must move with caution and uncertainty. The magnates are (justifiably) suspicious of one another and their agents."
Prince Sultan, he recorded, "has, of course, a corrupt interest in all contracts".

Nonetheless, Britain colluded with this medieval regime. More than a decade from the late 1960s, the archives reveal, government arms salesmen authorised bribes that totalled more than £100m - at least £500m in today's money. Much was paid out by one company: BAE [BAE's position].

Many years later a Conservative defence secretary, Ian Gilmour, admitted it. "You either got the business and bribed," he said, "or you didn't bribe and didn't get the business."

Diplomats such as Morris felt distaste for Lester Suffield's Defence Sales Organisation with its "childish pleasure in playing secret agents".

But much of the danger and difficulty of organising British bribes in Saudi Arabia lay in the diffuse power structure of the regime. As Morris lamented:

"There is no single golden key (or golden fixer) to open the door to an orderly, if crooked, world of arms sales."
Many senior Saudi figures had to be paid off. The Labour government's new, young foreign secretary, David Owen, was educated about that in a frank dispatch:

"To secure a contract, a company must secure the support not merely of a senior prince, often through an established agent through whom very substantial commissions have to be paid; but also of many ministers and officials down the line."

High-ranking Saudis took good care to keep these pay-offs secret from their people. Intermediaries or relatives were often used. Sultan's youngest brother, Prince Ahmad, was, according to the embassy, an agent for BAE.

Yet it was a commoner, the stout and moustachioed Adnan Khashoggi, who boasted he had become the world's richest man as an agent. Saudi Arabia's head of intelligence, Kamal Adham, observed:

"A man like Khashoggi had obvious advantages to the princes since ... he could be disowned at any time without a family scandal. Such was not the case with people like Prince Ahmad."

But what if a plausible Lebanese businessman said he secretly represented a prince? Was he genuine? An anxious civil servant from London, clutching his briefcase in a stifling hotel room, could scarcely ring up the prince himself.

As one British executive put it, these were "highly confidential and hazardous judgments". It was a jungle.

One Saudi prize that Suffield failed to find in this jungle was a £112m contract to provide armoured cars to the National Guard, a rival force to the Saudi army.

He used Millbank Technical Services as the UK government's cut-out. It chose Mahmoud Fustuq as a "fixer", a Lebanese man who dangled a connection with the head of the National Guard's brother-in-law.

Suffield's men then tried to cancel Fustuq and use Khashoggi instead. Harold Hubert flew out to try to reach terms, saying:

"MTS could do a deal with Khashoggi. [His] own personal demands will probably be high, but that is the way business is done in Saudi Arabia."

Suffield begged the then defence secretary, Lord Carrington, to fly out to push the deal. He explained:

"Because of the usual considerations that apply to business in Saudi Arabia, ie the need to pay 'commissions', and also because Abdullah [the head of the National Guard, who is now king] wishes to give any purchase the appearance of a government-to-government deal, we proposed the UK package offer through MTS

At various times other fixers tried to get in on the act and we did our best to string them along while continuing to deal through the channel that Prince Abdullah desired

However, the temptation of business of this magnitude was causing other members of the royal family to suggest their 'clients', ie the US and France, should be allowed in the bidding."

The US won that deal in the end.

But in nearby Kuwait, Suffield did score. Kuwait had savage rules against bribery. But the British ambassador claimed to know better:

"For your own information, I understand that Vickers pay a percentage on any deal, which is shared between General Mubarak, Abdullah Ali Reza, and Khalaf."

Mohammed Khalaf ran the Kuwaiti military affairs office in London. General Mubarak was the Kuwaiti chief of staff. And Abdullah Ali Reza, of the Saudi-Kuwaiti merchant clan, was the most prominent "fixer" in town.

Using Ali Reza, and MTS again as a cut-out, Suffield sold a fleet of Chieftain tanks for £100m, thanks to a well-placed bribe of £3.5m.

It was back in Saudi Arabia, however, that Suffield secured his greatest long-term triumph. He oversaw the successive sales of BAE aircraft in deals that have now lasted more than a generation, and provide much of the Saudi air force fleet.

David Leigh and Rob Evans

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