It is also a victory for common sense. The Saudi royal family had become so offended by the SFO probe into allegations that BAE Systems had liberally distributed bribes, prostitutes and fast cars to win the Al Yamamah defence contract that they were in all seriousness threatening to break off diplomatic ties. Nevermind the parallel threat to around 100,000 aerospace jobs if the Saudis had cancelled the promised Eurofighter Typhoon contract and gone for the inferior French option instead.
The SFO was proceeding under a bribery law put in place as late as 2002, which a lily-livered Government was bulldozed by liberal opinion into implementing for the purpose of preventing this kind of thing happening again. Yet the allegations go back to long before the law came into force, when the commissions and favours alleged were very much a part of the price that had to be paid to win arms contracts in that part of the world.
Nor is it even as if there was a victim. The Saudis were being bribed with their own money. What's more, it would have taken years for the SFO to extract the necessary evidence from the secrecy of the Swiss banking system. In the meantime, untold damage would have been done to diplomatic relations, as well as Britain's commercial interests. The SFO's decision to proceed with an investigation displayed a quite breathtaking naivity. Wiser counsel has finally prevailed.
This is no 'victory' of any kind. The Government said that it was security and diplomatic considerations that led them to suspend the SFO inquiry, thus at least maintaining a (very thin) veneer over the legal niceties. But this is surely a shaming day for the rule of law and the separation of powers in the UK.
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