Prosecutors in the United Kingdom said on the first day of pleadings related to the trial of spoilers in London that oil companies managed, through maneuvering and manipulation and six million dollars in bribes, to win contracts with Iraq in the wake of the fall of the late President Saddam Hussein.
According to the US Bloomberg Agency, two ex-executives of Onaweel and a sales manager of one of its clients have been accused of conspiring to offer bribes to secure millions of dollars in labor contracts in Iraq between 2005 and 2011.
The website pointed out that the charges against Stephen Whitley, Paul Bond and Ziad Akl were the result of an investigation launched by the UK's Fraud Office in 2016 in a corruption case at Unawil, noting that the three men deny the charges.
The office's prosecutor, Michael Brompton, stated that an oil consulting firm founded by the Ahsani family in Monaco and the Dutch company "SBM", had obtained, with the help of Unawil, a contract to supply three floating marine systems in the Gulf, and this was done "after a long process of maneuvering and manipulation". .
Onaweel also helped Singapore-based Lighten Offshore Company secure a contract to lay two 48-inch pipelines and install floating systems, "and that included bribes to an SOC employee," according to Brompton.
The site pointed out that the Iraqi Southern Oil Company is state-owned and its headquarters is in the main port of Iraq, where most of its oil is exported in Basra. It is responsible for oil in the south of the country, and it was assigned the project on behalf of the country's oil ministry.
The master plan
Brompton said that once a recommendation was received from the Southern Oil Company, Unawil bribed senior ministry officials to secure the contracts, explaining that it paid a total of about $ 6 million in bribes to secure the two contracts, which together amounted to about $ 800 million.
The site pointed out that Iraq has become today one of the largest oil producers in the world, after its production and exports fell during the war significantly, which made the Oil Ministry develop a major plan to double its oil exports, when the new government is formed in 2006.
The site concluded that Whitley was vice president of SBM before joining Unawil as director in Iraq and before taking on various other positions, and Akl was director of Unawil in Iraq, while Bond was the director of SMB sales for the Middle East.