Another blow for under-fire director of Serious Fraud Office

THE Serious Fraud Office faces having a third conviction overturned in the botched Unaoil bribery case, in a fresh blow to the white-collar crime agency’s under-fire director.

Lawyers for Stephen Whiteley, a former Unaoil executive, said yesterday that he had applied to overturn his bribery conviction using similar arguments to two other defendants.

His move piles further pressure on the SFO and Lisa Osofsky, its director, and comes as the agency is braced for the publication of a judge-led review into how the case was handled.

Suella Braverman, the Attorney General, commissioned the review after Ziad Akle, another Unaoil defendant, successfully overturned his bribery conviction in December.

His lawyers argued that the SFO had failed to properly disclose meetings that Ms Osofsky and others had held with a “fixer” named David Tinsley.

In an excoriating ruling, Court of Appeal judges said the SFO should never have engaged with Mr Tinsley, a private investigator, and the agency’s failure to fully reveal its dealings had denied Mr Akle a chance at a fair trial.

Just months afterwards, Paul Bond, another defendant, succeeded in overturning his own bribery conviction along similar grounds.

Sam Healey, partner at JMW Solicitors, said Whiteley would now argue that his conviction was “unsafe” as well.

Whiteley, a former territory manager at Unaoil, was found guilty in July 2020 of paying $500,000 (£398,000) in bribes to help the company secure contracts worth $55m.

The SFO originally secured the convictions of Whiteley, Mr Akle, Mr Bond and Basil Al Jarah following an inquiry into $17m paid in bribes to win $1.7bn worth of contracts for Unaoil in Iraq. Mr Healey said: “Stephen Whiteley has submitted an appeal against his conviction – the lengthy investigation by the SFO, with which he co-operated fully, and the trial into his alleged wrongdoing at Unaoil cast a dark cloud over his life for several years and his health has suffered as a consequence.”

The move puts fresh pressure on Ms Osofsky as she and the SFO await the publication of the review of the Unaoil case, which is being led by former High Court judge Sir David Calvert-smith.

A spokesman for the Attorney General said that the review was likely to be delivered at the end of June. Ms Braverman will seek to update Parliament on its findings and the Government’s response before the recess on July 21.

Mr Akle’s appeal unearthed a huge trove of “embarrassing” documents that had not been properly disclosed to the defence in the original trials, the Court of Appeal found.

An SFO spokesman said: “We are aware of Mr Whiteley’s appeal and are considering our next steps.”

‘The trial into Mr Whiteley’s alleged wrongdoing at Unaoil cast a dark cloud over his life for several years’