Britain's SFO goofs again

The Serious Fraud Office has suffered a further embarrassment after a it was blamed by a judge for the collapse of a £40m bribery trial.

Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith accused Britain’s fraud busting agency of "mismanagement" in its case against Victor Dahdaleh, the businessman and Labour party donor.

The SFO had accused the Jordanian-born metals magnate of paying almost £40m in bribes between 1998 and 2006 to former managers of Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) in return for contracts worth more than £1.8bn with companies in which he had an interest.

Opening the case last November, the SFO’s lead counsel said the case was "about corruption... on a very large scale".

But the trial collapsed within weeks, despite Mr Dahdaleh admitting he had made payments to Alba managers – though claiming they were "custom and practice" in Bahraini culture and had been approved by a royal family member.

The case fell apart after the SFO’s key witness, Australian national Bruce Hall, changed his evidence and one of its lawyers admitted that it had "delegated" its investigation in Bahrain to Akin Gump, a US law firm.

Akin Gump was already representing Alba in a civil lawsuit against Mr Dahdaleh in the US, raising a clear conflict of interest – a situation exacerbated by the refusal of two of its lawyers to testify in the SFO case.

Giving judgment in a related case, Mr Loraine-Smith said the SFO had relied to an "extraordinary extent" on Akin Gump, adding: "The fact of delegation to a law firm acting in a foreign jurisdiction, with interests in direct conflict with the defendant’s, was bound to result in very real complications."

He added that "there’s not doubt" that the refusal of one of Akin Gump’s lawyers, Mark MacDougall, to attend the trial "led the SFO to bring these proceedings to a conclusion. It was discourteous to this court, no doubt about it, but [Mr MacDougall’s] primary duty was to his client in the USA."

An SFO spokesperson said: "No aspect of this investigation was delegated.

"It is a routine feature of cases where third party companies have legal representation for those lawyers to act as an intermediary between the prosecuting authority and the company in question. In this case we told Akin Gump exactly what material we wanted and we have no reason to believe that they did anything other than provide it to us.

"However, we are aware of the criticisms that were made of our handling of the investigation into Mr Dahdaleh’s case and will be studying the ruling carefully with a view to identifying any lessons that can be learnt."

Original report here

　

　

　

(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here