Friday, June 08, 2007

Prince Bandit

The Saudi's are experts at playing both sides against the middle and taking baksheesh for it.

The UK's biggest arms dealer, BAE Systems, paid hundreds of millions of pounds to the ex-Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

The investigation found that up to £120m a year was sent by BAE Systems from the UK into two Saudi embassy accounts in Washington.

There wasn't a distinction between the accounts of the embassy or official government accounts... and the accounts of the royal family
David Caruso
American bank investigator

The BBC's Panorama programme has established that these accounts were actually a conduit to Prince Bandar for his role in the 1985 deal to sell more than 100 warplanes to Saudi Arabia.

The purpose of one of the accounts was to pay the expenses of the prince's private Airbus.






If there are Terrorist States promoting insurgency in the region then one of them is Saudi Arabia, more so than even Iran. However unlike Iran they are an American client state, just like Israel.

And like Israel they can count on America to support their primitive accumulation of capital or criminal capitalism by any other name.

The Saudi family compact controls OPEC, and the U.S. is it's petrol-junkie.

And as a result of all those US Dollars the British Government is its weapons junkie.

At the same time it was claimed that Mr Blair was 'anxious' to complete another bumper arms deal with Saudi Arabia before he leaves office. In a further twist, BAE insisted that British governments from Mrs Thatcher's to Mr Blair's had known about and approved all the payments involved in the 22-year-old, £43bn Al Yamamah deal.

Mr Blair, whose government made bribery of foreign officials illegal in 2001, now faces more questions over why the Serious Fraud Office was ordered to ditch a probe into the 1985 Al Yamamah contract between BAE and Saudi Arabia.




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