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2020-07-24 Britain
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Former Unaoil boss jailed for five years over Iraq bribery
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[ARABNEWS] A former manager of Monaco-based consultancy Unaoil was on Thursday sentenced to five years in jail for paying more than $500,000 in bribes to an Iraqi official to secure a $55 million oil deal after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.British-Lebanese Ziad Akle, a 45-year-old former Iraq territory manager, was found guilty by a London jury of conspiring to commit bribery after a four-year, high-profile investigation by the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO).
Stephen Whiteley, a 65-year-old British former Unaoil manager for Iraq, Kazakhstan and Angola, was convicted alongside Akle but will be sentenced later, the SFO said.
Judge Martin Beddoe called the offenses "utterly exploitative" after the devastation of war and at a time of political and economic fragility in Iraq.
The sentence is another milestone in the complex, British wing of a transatlantic investigation into how Unaoil — once run by the prominent Ahsani family — helped Western companies secure energy projects over two decades.
The SFO has secured three convictions to date. But Akle’s lawyer has said he will appeal against his conviction because of concerns the SFO’s conduct during the investigation amounted to an abuse of process.
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Posted by Fred 2020-07-24 00:00||
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