Pressure mounts on SFO chief as review ordered into Unaoil failure11 Dec 2021 08:38
The attorney-general has launched an independent review after judges criticised the Serious Fraud Office and quashed the bribery conviction of a former energy executive in a ruling that described prosecutors as being responsible for a “serious failure”.
Lisa Osofsky, director of fraud agency, faces mounting pressure after the ruling over allegations that she cut “backroom deals” with a “fixer” involved in the investigation.
Last night Suella Braverman ordered an independent review into the SFO’s handling of the case, saying she was “deeply concerned about the findings in the judgment”.
Ziad Akle, Iraq manager at Unaoil, the Monaco-based consultancy, was found guilty last year on two charges of conspiracy to make corrupt payments in a case that the SFO said involved £5 million in bribes paid in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The former executive was sentenced to a five-year jail term.
Yesterday three judges in the Court of Appeal ruled that the fraud office, which investigated and prosecuted the case, had refused to provide Akle’s defence lawyers with crucial documents. The judges said the failure was “particularly regrettable, given that some of the documents had a clear potential to embarrass the SFO in their prosecution of this case”.
The judges declined to order a retrial, but said the ruling did not suggest that any SFO officials “had deliberately sought to cover anything up”. They added that the disclosure failings could have resulted from “innocent errors”.
Nonetheless, the ruling from Lord Justice Holroyde, Mr Justice Jeremy Baker and Mr Justice Jay will be seen as another blow to the fraud investigation agency.
Even at the trial where Akle, 46, was convicted, the judge sharply criticised Osofsky, 60, over her contact with an intermediary. Judge Martin Beddoe said that Osofsky had made herself vulnerable to “flattery” in contact she had with a US citizen, referred to in the trial only as DT. He is thought to be David Tinsley, a retired US Drug Enforcement Administration agent and founder of a private intelligence agency. He is understood to have worked for three members of the Ahsani family, which founded and ran Unaoil.
In the appeal ruling quashing Akle’s conviction, the judges said that “the underlying documents illustrate very clearly why it was wholly inappropriate for the SFO to have any dealings with Tinsley”.
Joanna Dimmock, Akle’s lawyer, said that the SFO had “undermined the whole justice system”. She said the ruling sent “a clear message — the SFO can no longer engage in backroom deals. There is no room in this jurisdiction for justice by fixer.”
Jeremy Summers, a partner at Osborne Clarke, a law firm, said that “this may well result in increased scrutiny of the SFO and further questions about its long-term future”.
An SFO spokeswoman said that agency officials were reviewing the ruling, and added: “Our application for retrial was rejected and we abide by that decision.”
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