Court documents
- R v Basil Al Jarah (guilty plea)
- R v Ziad Akle, Stephen Whiteley and Paul Bond (trial court: T20177415; 20187107)
- R v Paul Bond (retrial: T20177415; 20187107)
- R v Ziad Akle and Paul Bond (Court of Appeal: 202001870 B1; 202002164 B1; 20210745 B1)
- R v Paul Bond (Court of Appeal: 202104035)
In July 2019, Basil Al Jarah, pleaded guilty to five offences of conspiracy to give corrupt payments.
The trial of the other three defendants heard that they conspired with members of the Ahsani family and with others to pay Oday al Quraishi – an official in the state-owned South Oil Company – to influence tenders in favour of their clients, including SBM Offshore. The trial also heard that Unaoil paid officials in the Iraqi Ministry of Oil through another middleman, Ahmed Al Jibouri, in order to get projects approved for its clients. The SFO said that corrupt payments worth $5.4 million went to senior figures in the Iraqi Ministry of Oil to secure approval for construction projects, including two pipelines worth $800 million.
In July 2020, Ziad Akle was found guilty of two counts of conspiracy to give corrupt payments and Stephen Whiteley was found guilty of one count to give corrupt payments. The jury could not reach a verdict on the case of Paul Bond but, following a retrial in February 2021, Bond was found guilty of two counts of conspiracy to give corrupt payments.
The prosecutions were a much-needed win for the SFO, but the success was short-lived. In December 2021, the Court of Appeal overturned Ziad Akle’s conviction and denied the SFO an all-important re-trial. The judgment criticised the SFO’s conduct in the case, finding that the refusal to disclose documents requested by the defence was a “serious failure by the SFO to comply with their duty”. The court described this disclosure failure as “particularly regrettable given that some of the documents had a clear potential to embarrass the SFO”.
This stinging defeat for the SFO has left the entire Unaoil case on shaky ground. Akle’s success on appeal prompted Paul Bond to challenge his own conviction, arguing that the SFO’s disclosure failures equally denied him a fair trial. The Court of Appeal upheld Bond’s appeal in March 2022 and the SFO has not sought a retrial.
These quashed convictions have left the SFO with significant costs orders only months after the failed prosecution of two Serco executives caused the agency to exceed its annual spending limit by £2.55 million.
Yet the fallout from the quashing of Akle and Bond’s convictions extends far beyond the legal fate of the Unaoil case. The SFO’s conduct in the case bears a number a concerning features which will be subject to independent scrutiny of the agency’s modus operandi – including unusual contact between the SFO’s director and a private investigator, and serious disclosure failings about this contact that led to the quashed conviction.
In December 2021, the Attorney General announced an independent review into the SFO’s handling of the Unaoil case. Retired High Court judge and former Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir David Calvert-Smith, has been tasked to get to the bottom of why the disclosure failings in the Unaoil case happened and what its implications are for “the policies, practices, procedures and related culture of the SFO”. This independent review, which is due to report by the end of May 2022, will be closely watched to see what impact it may have on the future direction of the SFO.
It is not yet clear whether other controversial aspects of the case will be examined during the review. These include the behaviour of the US authorities in relation to the SFO’s investigation, and the unfair and wrongful dismissal of the SFO’s senior investigator overseeing the case which the employment tribunal found was done at the behest of US authorities.
