Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Britain’s Serious Fraud Office has spent £16.2 million on its failed corruption investigation into oil consultancy Unaoil. Nearly a third of that went to compensate three executives it wrongly prosecuted, according to data it was ordered to make public by a tribunal.
The years-long investigation into corrupt oil and gas deals made by Monaco-based Unaoil resulted in tensions with the agency’s US counterparts, a critical review by the British government and the acquittal of three defendants because they did not receive a fair trial.
The SFO spent £11.3 million on the investigation and a further £4.9 million on settlements with the defendants. according to a freedom of information request submitted by the Financial Times.
The anti-fraud agency resisted making public the costs of the investigation for almost 18 months, until the First-tier Tribunal ordered the agency to provide the data in November.
The revelation underlines the impact of the failure of the high-profile case for the SFO under former director Lisa Osofsky, which, in addition to the collapse of a number of other key cases, has left the agency scrambling to regain its reputation to build and safeguard its reputation. back on a safe base.
A spokesperson for the SFO said: “We recognize the public interest in our cases and publish information about our work wherever possible, while protecting more sensitive details about our investigations.”
The SFO first opened a criminal investigation into Unaoil, its officers, employees and agents in 2016 for suspected offenses of bribery, corruption and money laundering. The case led to a series of criminal investigations into major Western multinationals, including KBR and Petrofac.
The KBR investigation was ultimately closed, while prosecutions in the Petrofac case are still ongoing.
Unaoil was run by the British-Iranian Ahsani family, founded by father Ata Ahsani and operated with his sons Cyrus and Saman.
Ata Ahsani paid the US Department of Justice a $2.25 million settlement, but was never convicted. Cyrus and Saman pleaded guilty to the charges and cooperated with the DoJ in exchange for lenient sentences. Saman was sentenced to one year in prison in 2023. Cyrus has yet to be sentenced.
In Britain, the SFO has prosecuted four people in connection with the bribery scandal. Ziad Akle and Stephen Whiteley were both territory managers of Unaoil. Paul Bond worked for Unaoil client, Dutch energy services company SBM Offshore, and Basil al-Jarah was Unaoil’s former partner in Iraq.
Al Jarah pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years and four months in prison. The other three individuals were found guilty of conspiracy to make corrupt payments and imprisoned before their convictions were overturned on appeal.
The case involved a fierce battle between the US and British investigations, which led to former SFO director Osofsky being dragged into the scandal because of her personal contact with David Tinsley, a representative of the Ahsanis.
Tinsley, a retired US Drug Enforcement Agency official, had offered to convince a former Unaoil executive and business partner to plead guilty in Britain in exchange for the SFO dropping its case against the Ahsanis.
The SFO eventually stopped pursuing Cyrus and Saman after striking a deal with the DoJ. In response to a government-ordered review of the case, Osofsky said the agency was reviewing its “work practices and culture.”
The three former executives found guilty at trial in Britain had their convictions overturned on appeal in 2021 and 2022, partly due to Tinsley’s role in the wider case and the SFO’s botched disclosure related to the contact of the service with him.
The investigation also led to an employment claim against the SFO, which lost the agency after one of its prosecutors was fired in connection with the case.
Lawyers for the defendants in the British case declined to comment or did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Bond said the cost to taxpayers of the case was “eye-watering” and that “no one has been truly held accountable for the decision to blindly proceed with this baseless prosecution.”
Previous representatives for the Ahsanis did not immediately respond to emails from the FT.
The judgement of the Unaoil inquiry in 2022 concluded that while some events were “beyond the control of the SFO”, others were caused by “failings on the part of certain individuals and/or by ‘cultural’ issues” within the organisation.