Good morning. On Wednesday, two men were acquitted of paying bribes totalling millions of pounds to senior Saudis to secure and maintain a UK defence deal worth £1.6bn. In their successful defence, the men argued that they had been unfairly prosecuted, because the payments had been authorised by the British and Saudi governments.
Yesterday, the Guardian published the first tranche of a major investigation into the basis of their defence – and the story it tells about the murky relationship between the UK Ministry of Defence, the middle men and the Saudi royal family.
More stories are coming out later this morning. Today’s newsletter is a primer on David Pegg and Rob Evans’s investigation: the court case at the heart of it, the vexed history of defence deals with Saudi Arabia and the questions the British government now has to answer. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
US news | Joe Biden has confirmed a new US mission to deliver aid to Gaza and repeatedly taken aim at Donald Trump in his State of the Union address. Biden’s most significant announcement came toward the end of his roughly hour-long speech, when he confirmed that the US military would establish a “temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the coast of Gaza” capable of receiving large shipments of water, food and medicine.
NHS | More than 58,000 NHS staff reported sexual assaults and harassment from patients, their relatives and other members of the public in 2023 in the health service’s annual survey.
Environment | Industry could be producing more cancer-causing PCB chemicals – polychlorinated biphenyls – today than at any other point in history, despite their production having been banned more than 40 years ago.
Security | A document from Prevent, the official scheme to stop radicalisation, includes believing in socialism, communism, anti-fascism and anti-abortion in a list of potential signs of ideologies leading to terrorism. It comes as the Conservative government considers widening what it will consider to be extremism.
Conservatives | Rishi Sunak has been warned against fighting an election on an unfunded plan to abolish employee national insurance amid projections it could blow a £40bn hole in the public finances.
In depth: Unpicking a scandal years in the making
You have probably never heard of Jeffrey Cook and John Mason. Cook, 67, was the managing director of a company called GPT Special Project Management Ltd, which was paid by the British government to be a key contractor to deliver a £1.6bn defence deal called Sangcom in which the UK installed and maintained communications gear for the Saudi national guard. Mason, 81, was an accountant and the part-owner of a firm that received payments totalling £9.7m from GPT and directed them to a group of leading Saudi officials between 2007 and 2010.
After an investigation lasting nearly a decade, the Serious Fraud Office prosecuted the two men on the basis that those payments were corrupt. In 2022, their trial was halted after the MoD initially failed to hand over crucial evidence – and witnesses who worked there were accused of “collective amnesia”. The prosecution of Cook and Mason might have remained obscure if it weren’t for the basis of their successful defence: not that the payments weren’t made, but that they were made with the full knowledge of officials at the MoD.
Now that the trial is over, the implications of that defence can be revealed in full. Here’s a summary of the key stories.
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What is the story about?
In essence, Cook and Mason’s lawyers told the trial that they were being scapegoated: Tom Allen, Cook’s KC, told jurors that the exact type of payments made had been effectively authorised by the MoD, which had also authorised similar payments, and that his client had been “hung out to dry”.
In the course of their trial, as this piece explains, documents emerged that revealed the MoD paid at least £8m under a secret contract from 2014, codenamed Project Arrow, to a Saudi company, called ABTSS. GPT had made payments through third parties to ABTSS – and the Saudi firm was later alleged to have been used as a way to route payments to senior Saudi officials.
Those payments came as the Sangcom deal for the supply of military communications equipment was said to be in danger of collapsing, and the MoD sought to maintain it. The Project Arrow contract continued until at least 2017.
Meanwhile, the Serious Fraud Office suspected that a Saudi prince, Miteb bin Abdullah, was the beneficiary of the GPT payments. It was Miteb (above) who was said to have asked for the Project Arrow contract to be signed. Philip Hammond, then the defence secretary, was briefed shortly before a meeting with Miteb while the MoD was weighing up the decision.
An official told colleagues that Hammond “had read carefully the brief and is prepared for the Miteb meeting”, although exactly what the minister was told is unknown. Hammond has been approached for comment.
Emails revealed during the trial show that a senior MoD official told colleagues that Miteb’s request would be “difficult/impossible to turn down”, and that “conversely it is a real opportunity to build influence and reputation with the one person we, HMG, really want to reach”.
But others in the MoD warned that great care would have to be taken “to ensure that there can be no accusation, either real or perceived, of any impropriety”. And at the trial, an MoD witness denied that Project Arrow had been set up to enable payments to members of the national guard, and said he would have been “extremely alarmed” had such a notion been suggested.
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Who is Miteb?
Miteb’s father, Abdullah, was the king of Saudi Arabia from 2005 until he died in 2015. Miteb was once considered a possible successor, and led the Saudi national guard, the country’s elite security force.
That role appears to have been lucrative, and Miteb was believed to have taken a personal cut over many years from contracts to supply equipment to the guards. The Sangcom deal was one such case.
For all his wealth and seniority, though, he was not immune to the risks of Saudi royal politics. In 2017, he was arrested by Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto Saudi ruler, as part of an anti-corruption drive that was suspected to be a way of taking down political rivals. It is not known precisely what he was accused of, but he was eventually freed after he reportedly admitted corruption and paid $1bn. His whereabouts are now unknown.
For more on Miteb, see this short profile.
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What is the history of British deal-making in Saudi Arabia?
Among the many memorable details in this investigation is the description used by a Foreign Office official in the 1960s for the mechanism of British deal-making in Saudi Arabia: a “deniable fiddle”. Middlemen were a crucial means of distancing the British source of the payments from the Saudis who would ultimately receive them.
There is no denial that payments to officials were an accepted part of arms deals between the UK and Saudi Arabia until the mid-90s: indeed, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) described the British government’s attitude towards such payments as “permissive”. This backgrounder explains that history in detail.
That custom changed, particularly as new legal frameworks were introduced more recently. But the evidence heard at the trial suggests that there are now major questions over whether a similar arrangement was in place as recently as seven years ago.
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What was GPT’s role in all this?
In 2010, Ian Foxley, a senior financial executive at GPT, discovered payments marked as “bought-in services”. He then turned whistleblower, and gave his evidence to the SFO. The investigation that followed ultimately led to Miteb.
In the 1990s, the MoD entered a contract with GPT to facilitate the provision of equipment and training to the Saudi national guard. The trial heard that a senior government official told a GPT executive that alongside the legitimate transactions an additional payment would be made to a fixer’s offshore company, Simec – and that the payments had to be kept secret.
The court heard that a British civil servant and a Saudi official were both said to have signed a letter that “confirmed that the payments to Simec were necessary to enable the contract between the MoD and the [national guard] to run smoothly”.
That letter was supposedly locked in an MoD safe. The MoD says it has never been able to find such a letter.
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Why does all of this matter?
The sheer complexity of this saga might be seen as part of the point: the layers between the British government and Saudi officials are alleged to have been deliberately introduced to maintain as much distance as possible between the sources of the various payments and their ultimate destinations.
Today, British military deals with Saudi Arabia, traditionally the dominant segment of the UK’s arms export trade, remain controversial, not least because of how weapons might be used. The Campaign Against the Arms Trade says that UK-made weapons have been extensively used as part of Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign in Yemen, which has left thousands of civilians dead. It estimated that between 2015 and 2023, some £8.2bn worth of arms were licensed to be sold.
Now, campaigners are calling for a judge-led inquiry of the MoD’s role in payments to the Saudis given the new evidence brought to light. Dr Susan Hawley, the director of Spotlight on Corruption, said: “The MoD’s apparent decision to contract directly with a Saudi company at the heart of the SFO’s criminal investigation, at the direct request of the Saudi official implicated in the allegations, is deeply shocking.”
What else we’ve been reading
The bingeable Netflix series One Day shattered the internet’s collective heart with its yearning, palpable tension and tragic ending. Hollie Richardson takes a look at why the show was able to so easily overtake the film adaptation. Nimo
To my dear friend out there, whom I love, but who is never, ever on time – please read this guide! Madeleine Aggeler asked experts why some people are late to everything, and what they can do to change that. Nazia Parveen, acting deputy editor, newsletters
Tareasa Johnson’s eight-hour, 50-part TikTok series on the web of lies her ex-husband wove left millions of viewers on the age of their seat. With talent agencies, production companies and media networks all clamouring for her attention, Angelina Chapin spoke to Johnson for the Cut (£) about how she is coping with the potentially lucrative path ahead of her from her virality. Nimo
“We’ve all been wounded”: To the outside world, Patti Davis was wrapped up in the love of the perfect family. In reality, she was struggling with her father Ronald Reagan’s remoteness, her mother Nancy’s rages – and worse. The actor and author looks back on years of unhappiness. Nazia
With Oppenheimer tipped to win best picture at the Oscar’s this weekend, Andrew Pulver peruses Christopher Nolan’s back catalogue to rank all of his films. Nimo
Sport
Europa League | Darwin Nunez scored twice to help Liverpool rout Sparta 5-1. Roma delivered a 4-0 thumping of Brighton at Stadio Olimpico. In the third-tier competition, Aston Villa held Ajax 0-0 in Amsterdam.
Formula One | Christian Horner’s accuser has been suspended following his exoneration by an independent investigation into “inappropriate behaviour” against the Red Bull team principal.
Football | A survey of 115 UK-based female coaches conducted by Kick It Out found that 80% of respondents had experienced sexism in a coaching environment, while 60% had considered quitting their roles due to the treatment they had received because of their sex.
Something for the weekend
Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read and listen to right now
TV
The Rise and Fall of Boris Johnson
Oh dear God. This four-part documentary, tracing the career arc of our blustering erstwhile prime minister (2019-22), has surely come too soon. Hasn’t it? Apart from anything else, can we be sure he will stay fallen? If ever a Lazarus were going to bounce … Anyway. Let us brace ourselves and start at the beginning of this sorry tale. This horrifying series makes it way through years of splutter-bumbles and shouting at yucca plants and wrecking everything, until even his champions declare him friendless. Lucy Mangan
Music
Ariana Grande: Eternal Sunshine
Unlike some peers, Grande has never been one for whole-cloth reinvention, and her post-2020 run reflects an artist dedicated to refining the links between Hollywood grandeur, classic R&B and trap’s staccato fizz. Primarily helmed by Grande and core collaborators Max Martin and Ilya Salmanzadeh, Eternal Sunshine is more full-bodied than the silvery, breathy Positions, though the album starts with a bit of a feint in Bye, a lavish orchestral-disco showstopper that soundtracks our heroine’s escape. When everything can come falling down, putting up pedestals helps no one, and the beatific, mature Eternal Sunshine brings Grande safely back down to earth. Laura Snapes
Film
Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell
The question of what the title means, or what the movie means, remain open; even so, this is a quietly amazing feature debut from 34-year-old Thien An Pham, born in Vietnam and based in Houston, Texas. It’s a jewel of slow cinema set initially in Saigon and then the mountainous, lush central highlands far from the city; it is a zero-gravity epic quest, floating towards its strange narrative destiny and then maybe floating up over that to something else. It’s compassionate, intimate, spiritual and mysterious. Peter Bradshaw
Podcast
Who Replaced Avril Lavigne?
BBC Sounds, episodes weekly
“I know what you’re thinking – she’s definitely dead.” Very funny comedian Joanne McNally has become obsessed with the internet’s wild decade-long conspiracy that Avril Lavigne was replaced by a doppelganger because she either died or retired – so she’s set up an office in her “current” boyfriend’s home and started this investigation. She’s not even a Lavigne fan, which only adds to the hilarity of her Stacey Dooley-like ambitions. Hollie Richardson
The front pages
“US to build port on shore of Gaza to allow aid deliveries” says the Guardian splash headline this Friday morning. “I did nothing but show my baby love” says the Metro, reporting on this court case. “Hunt pulls £200mn from councils after clawing back house sale funds” – that’s the Financial Times while the i has “Labour and Tories refuse to explain UK spending cuts before 2024 election”. “‘London is now a no-go zone for Jews’” – that’s the Daily Telegraph paraphrasing Robin Simcox, the UK’s independent counter-extremism tsar. “Pension pinchers” – the Daily Mirror says there is a “Tory budget bombshell” that will “hammer 8m older people”. “Don’t leave our country defenceless” – the Daily Mail highlights the lack of extra defence spending. “Doctors to track patients’ step counts on NHS app” reports the Times. Swallow your coffee before reading further because the Daily Express’s lead headline is “Brexit is a great British success story worth billions”.
Today in Focus
Black Box: the connectionists
This is the story of Geoffrey Hinton, a man who set out to understand the brain and ended up working with a group of researchers who invented a technology so powerful that even they don’t truly understand how it works. This is about a collision between two mysterious intelligences – two black boxes – human and artificial. And it’s already having profound consequences
Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
For years, La Joyita, a prison outside Panama City, was known for its particularly grim conditions. Violence was rampant, and overcrowded prisoners were forced to live on top of piles of decaying waste. In 2014 Franklin Ayón, a former inmate, decided to come up with a plan to make the situation more livable. He designed a recycling scheme named EcoSólidos, where prisoners would collect, separate, recycle and sell waste and their work would earn them reduced sentences.
A decade on and the project is a resounding success. 80% of waste generated in the prison is recycled; food waste is turned into compost for the prisons gardens where fruit and vegetables are grown; and the rate of reoffending and returning to prison has dropped from 65% to 45% since 2019. No prisoners who have taken part in EcoSólidos have reoffended either. Seeing the achievements in La Joyita, four other prisons have begun implementing the scheme. “There’s something really wonderful about receiving rubbish that you know won’t end up going to waste, and protecting and caring for the environment,” says Ayón.
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Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until Monday.
