Man, 65, jailed for his role in a $6m oil deal bribery plot

AN EAST Yorkshire businessman has been jailed for three years for his role in a multi-million pound bribery plot to secure oil infrastructure contracts in Iraq in the wake of the US-British invasion.

Stephen Whiteley, 65, from Beverley, was part of a conspiracy to pay out bribes totalling $6m (£4.9m) to politicians and stateowned companies after Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003.

Executives at the Monacobased

oil company Unaoil hoped to secure Iraqi contracts worth $800m (£650.7m) as the new government tried to rebuild the country in the aftermath of the war.

Whiteley was convicted of one count of conspiracy to make corrupt payments alongside 45-yearold Ziad Akle.

Addressing Whiteley, who appeared via videolink at Southwark Crown Court, Judge Martin

Beddoe said: “I acknowledge that you played a subordinate role to that of Akle.”

He added: “There’s only one way with dealing with you today, it’s a way I’m sure you have known for a long time.”

Akle had been jailed for five years on July 23 after being found guilty of two counts of conspiracy to make corrupt payments.

Akle, from Marylebone, London, who is a British-Lebanese national, was Unaoil’s territory manager for Iraq, while Whiteley was vice president of Dutchbased SBM Offshore until May 2009 when he joined Unaoil.

The trial had heard that the infrastructure needed to produce and distribute crude oil in Iraq had become old and dilapidated during the Hussein regime.

The Iraqi Ministry of Oil planned to increase production by acquiring three single point mooring buoys in the Persian Gulf to allow tankers to load oil offshore. Basra-based South Oil Company, a state-owned firm, was put in charge.

One of the businesses hoping to cash in through commission was Monaco-based Unaoil.

Unaoil allied itself with Dutchbased company SBM Offshore, which won the contract for supplying the buoys. It also helped Singapore company Leighton Offshore

get the contract for installing the buoys and laying the pipelines. In each case, Serious Fraud Office prosecutors alleged that Unaoil paid bribes to the South Oil Company’s project manager to secure the two contracts.

Its director, Lisa Osofsky, said: “The flagrant greed and callous criminality exhibited by these men undermines the reputation and integrity of British business on the international stage.”