Saudi Arabia was awarded a contract called Project Salam, or al-Salam, meaning “peace”, to BAE Systems, Europe’s largest defence company. BAE Systems will supply 72 Eurofighters to Saudi Arabia. The deal is £4.4 billion pound.
There is no doubt this deal good for the aerospace industry and the wider UK economy. But Critics, say the government has put commercial interest before ethics and had given in to Saudi blackmail.
The Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) had dropped a probe last year into a sale of jets to the Saudis in the 1980s under Saudi threat.
The SFO investigation revealed that BAE secretly transferred more than $2bn (£1bn) to accounts to Prince Bandar.
It is also worth mentioning that Britain’s arms export guidelines say sales should not be approved for countries which abuse human rights.
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