British Court Says Prince Bandar Bribery Probe Closure Illegal

It appears that Prince Bandar, nicknamed "Bandar Bush" for his closeness to the Bush clan, may not have been quite as successful as he though in shutting down the bribery investigation against him.

The basic deal is that Bandar netted billions of dollars (a quick Google shows £1 billion, you do the math) in bogus "consulting fees" in order to "facilitate" the £43bn Al-Yamamah arms deal.

The Serious Fraud Organization was looking into the deal, and was near to getting Swiss bank account information, when Tony Blair shut it down, probably there was a threat that the sales of 72 Eurofighter Typhoons would be canceled if there were further investigations.

The OECD, an international corruption watchdog, condemned the termination of the investigation.

It's unclear from the story whether this ruling means that the investigation will restart, but Labour is taking no chances, they have a draft law in Parliament that would allow, "an Attorney General to close down such investigations as he or she saw fit on 'national security' grounds".