6.09.2007

Prince Bandar's Wild Ride

So Prince Bandar shows up at a bank and wants $2 million cash for "traveling expenses." The bank refused. Imagine being asked to scrape up $2 million in cash out of the bank's vault. Do they even have that much laying around at one time? He spends $17 million refurbishing one of his palaces.

"He is quoted in a recent biography saying that he personally flew $10m in a suitcase to Rome and gave it to a priest at the Vatican Bank, in order to covertly fund the Christian Democrats against the Communists in the 1983 Italian elections." See The Guardian article by clicking on the title to this post.

So why the scandal? Sure, the guy's a bit weird, but who cares? A British company, BAE, got a contract to build military weapons for Saudi Arabia. Apparently, as part of the deal, they have been sending $30 million to a bank account in the U.S. every quarter for at least 10 years as a bribe to the Saudi princes making the deal. Can you even imagine getting that kind of money EVERY THREE MONTHS? Bribing foreign officials has only just become illegal in Britain. And Tony Blair shut down the investigation because of "national security" reasons.

There's a lot of jobs in Britain being funded by Saudi military purchases. So they don't want to scratch too deeply on something silly like bribery.

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