Kirstin Ridley

LONDON, (Reuters) – A British man convicted over the securing of oil contracts in Iraq post-occupation filed an appeal Monday. This could be a blow for one of the most prominent bribery cases in the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

Paul Bond (69) was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in March following an investigation into Unaoil, a Monaco-based oil company, winning contracts for Western clients in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Central Asia.

After the Dec. 10, London Court of Appeal’s decision to reverse the conviction of Ziad Akle (another Unaoil Manager for Iraq), the ex-manager at Dutch energy service company SBM Offshore appealed.

A court ruled Akle’s trial was unjustified because of serious SFO failures. Bond’s appeal, which comes 10 days after an Independent Review by the Attorney General was ordered, will put more pressure on Lisa Osofsky as SFO director.

Bond’s legal team claimed that Akle was innocent of his charges because SFO denied to give material to defence. It made him unfit for trial.

“The Court of Appeal’s decision, according to us, allows for the acquittal of all remaining convicted defendants and so we are making our own application,” Joseph Kotrie Monson of Mary Monson Solicitors said. Bond’s lawyer was Joseph Kotrie Monson.

Stephen Whiteley’s representative declined to answer questions about whether Stephen Whiteley would be following suit.

Court of Appeal judges reproved the SFO for not releasing to defense documents the evidence of “wholly inappropriate contact” between SFO and U.S.-based fixers with vested interest, who tried to convince Akle and Basil Al Jarah that they should plead guilty.

Senior judges claimed that defense lawyers, without this material, were “significantly disabled” in challenging Al Jarah’s reliability and admissibility at Whiteley’s trial.

Former DEA agent David Tinsley was the fixer. He worked for prominent Ahsani families, who founded Unaoil.

British-Iranian siblings Cyrus and Saman Ahsani were convicted in U.S.A in 2019 of being part in a multimillion dollar scheme to bribe officials in nine countries. They have yet to be sentenced.

They were not charged with their father.

Judges stated that Tinsley had wanted to plead with others in order to convince the SFO to drop any British Ahsanis prosecution. Tinsley claimed that he had acted correctly throughout.