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A former UK Ministry of Defence employee has been sentenced to more than two years in prison after being convicted in a long-running Saudi bribery investigation.
Jeffrey Cook, 67, was handed the 30-month sentence at Southwark Crown Court in London on Friday after a jury found him guilty last month of receiving more than £70,000 in kickbacks in cash and cars.
His imprisonment brings an end to a more than decade-long investigation by the UK Serious Fraud Office into bribes paid to Saudi officials to secure lucrative defence contracts with the UK government.
Cook was convicted on one count of misconduct in public office between September 2004 and November 2008, but the jury acquitted him and co-defendant John Mason, an 81-year-old accountant, of more serious corruption charges.
The agency had accused the two men of involvement in nearly £10mn of bribes paid to Saudi officials between January 2007 and December 2012 to secure £1.6bn of contracts between the MoD and the Saudi Arabian National Guard for the installation and operation of Saudi military communications networks, delivered by GPT Special Project Management, a now-defunct unit of Airbus.
Cook’s conviction was for the less serious offence of misconduct in public office over funds he received from a consultancy called ME Consultants, which was registered in the Cayman Islands and where he had personal contacts
Lawyers for Cook highlighted that he had been found guilty for the lesser offence only and said he should receive a suspended sentence, pointing to his age and poor health. They also said he “posed no risk” to the public.
Handing down the sentence, Mr Justice Picken said he recognised Cook was “not a young man” and also acknowledged it would be “something of an overstatement” to characterise him as a “senior public official”, which would carry a tougher sentence.
However, he added that Cook had “made a personal gain at the expense of the public purse” and pointed to a “high level of profit” and “abuse of trust” involved in the case.
“This offence is so serious that only a custodial sentence can be justified.”
SFO director Nick Ephgrave said the sentencing demonstrated the agency’s “ability to hold individuals to account, particularly when their actions undermine trust in our institutions”.
The SFO opened its case in 2012 after two whistleblowers raised concerns about the GPT payments. One of them, Ian Foxley, previously a lieutenant colonel in the British army and a former senior executive at GPT, filed a legal claim last month against the MoD, the Department for Business and Trade and GPT in relation to the corruption and his treatment as a whistleblower.
GPT pleaded guilty in 2021 to one count of corruption between December 2008 and July 2010 and paid a penalty of about £30mn.
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