I haven't seen any more specific stories about it recently. The OECD has criticised Britain for dropping the investigation, and
is going to carry out its own inquiry.
The Al Yamamah deals go back over 20 years - to when Thatcher was in power, and her son Mark was getting money from the deal. There appears to have been huge amounts of bribes, and successive British governments have ignored it, on the grounds that it props up one of the few remaining bits of British manufacturing, and keeps the Saudi royal family on good terms.
For an example of the background on this, but which shows how frustratingly shadowy this all is (Paul Foot, the author of the review, was a great investigative journalist, but he never uncovered it all), here's a review of a book about Jonathan Aitken, a Conservative cabinet minister, who was convicted of perjury in the 90s:
'By the middle of 1976,' these three Guardian journalists report, 'Jonathan was effectively on Prince Mohammed's payroll': probably the fattest payroll on earth. The Prince provided Aitken with sumptuous offices in Mayfair, the money to invest (surreptitiously) in a newly franchised television company (TV-am), a merchant bank (Aitken Hume), a health hydro (Inglewood), a wonderful house within easy walking distance of the House of Commons, a mansion in his Kent constituency, a Jaguar. In return, Aitken put himself entirely at the Prince's disposal. He would do anything, his secretary reported, to 'keep the Arabs happy'. He would even help to provide them with what they were denied at home by their wives and their laws: prostitutes. All the gifts which providence had showered on Jonathan Aitken were devoted to pimping for the billionaires from Riyadh.
The relationship between Prince and pimp grew closer after 1985, when Margaret Thatcher signed the first of the Al Yamamah agreements on behalf of the British Government. Al Yamamah, Arabic for 'The Dove', was the biggest arms deal in history. Over the next decade, 20 billion dollars' worth of Saudi oil and cash were to pay for bombers and guns and warships made in British factories. The price in every case was far higher than the manufacturing cost. Harding et al quote some examples: 'A Tornado fighter-bomber which cost Nato £20m was to be sold to the Saudis for closer to £35m . . . Each 2000 lb bomb that went on the planes was fitted with a sophisticated electronic fuse made by Thorn-EMI . . . a total of 26 per cent in commissions was paid by Thorn EMI on each transaction.' The authors conclude: 'An underground river of money of at least £300m a year in secret commissions began to flow, corrupting British business life.'
Mrs Thatcher liked to talk about 'good husbandry': here, in its place, was unimaginable profligacy and corruption. Yet even the most inquisitive journalist with access to government press offices and accounts found it impossible effectively to expose the great outrage of the time. We were dealing almost entirely in rumour. For instance, it became 'common knowledge' that Mark Thatcher enriched himself to the tune of £12m from the Al Yamamah deals. Thatcher himself never denied it or sued anyone for mentioning it. Yet no one, not even the authors of Thatcher's Gold, an entire book on the subject, could produce a single hard fact to prove it. The name of Wafic Said, a multi-millionaire friend of the Thatchers, was bandied about as a beneficiary of the Al Yamamah commissions. Once again, there was not a single document or reliable piece of evidence to prove the connection. In 1991, the National Audit Office carried out an inquiry into Al Yamamah. Incredibly, the report was never published. At the first whiff of the burglar, the watchdog slunk away. The report was suppressed by order of Bob Sheldon, the Labour chairman of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, and his Tory deputy. I remember contacting Sheldon in his Lancashire constituency on the day before the 1992 General Election, and remonstrating with him. Did he not have a reputation in the House of Commons for prising unpalatable facts and figures out of the ministries? Did he not believe in open government? Was he not suppressing a report which ought to be in the public domain? Yes, yes, yes, he muttered mournfully, but 'there are too many jobs at stake here.' The report, he promised, found 'no evidence of corruption, or of public money being used improperly'. Sheldon said he had spent 'many many hours worrying about his decision' but in the end he came down on the side of obfuscation and silence.
Even the three Guardian authors, who have had access to documents which writs have forced out of the previous government and the Aitken entourage, are short on hard facts about the extent of the Al Yamamah commissions and their destinations. Somehow, hundreds of millions of pounds are still being diverted every year from government-to-government arms contracts via scores of hidey-holes into the secret bank accounts of the Saudi royals and their British acolytes.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n01/print/foot01_.html
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