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Two former middlemen accused of bribing Saudi Arabian officials to secure lucrative defence contracts with the UK government were acquitted of corruption by a London jury in a long-running investigation, with one found guilty of misconduct in public office.
Jeffrey Cook, 67, former managing director of GPT Special Project Management, and John Mason, 81, an accountant and part-owner of some of GPT’s subcontractor companies, were acquitted at Southwark Crown Court of one count of corruption between January 2007 and December 2012 in relation to an alleged £10mn in bribes paid to Saudi officials to win business.
But Cook, a former employee at the UK Ministry of Defence, was found guilty on Wednesday of one count of misconduct in public office between September 2004 and November 2008. He was accused of receiving about £70,000 in kickbacks in the form of cash and cars while he was an employee at the MoD.
The split verdict is a blow for the UK Serious Fraud Office, which prosecuted the case, ending the longest-running criminal investigation on its books and a probe that has been fraught with diplomatic complications. The SFO opened its case in 2012 after two whistleblowers from GPT raised concerns about payments by the company.
The alleged crimes related to payments made to Saudi officials to secure £1.6bn of contracts between the MoD and the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG) for the installation and operation of Saudi military communications networks, delivered by GPT Special Project Management, a now-defunct unit of Airbus. The work was known as the SANGCOM project.
Cook will be sentenced in April. The maximum sentence is unlimited.
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