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"A Saudi prince received secret payments from the UK's biggest arms dealer, a BBC investigation has revealed.BAE Systems made regular payments of hundreds of millions of pounds to Prince Bandar bin Sultan for more than a decade.
"The payments were made with the full knowledge of the Ministry of Defence.
"Prince Bandar would not comment and BAE systems said they acted lawfully at all times. The MoD said information about the Al Yamamah deal was confidential.
"The Prince served for 20 years as Saudi ambassador to the US.
"Up to £120m a year was sent by BAE from the UK into two Saudi embassy accounts in Washington for more than a decade.
"The BBC's Panorama programme has established that these accounts were actually a conduit to Prince Bandar, the architect of the 1980s Al Yamamah deal to sell warplanes to Saudi.
The purpose of one of the accounts was to pay the expenses of the Prince's private Airbus.
"David Caruso, an investigator who worked for the American bank where the accounts were held, said Prince Bandar had been taking money for his own personal use out of accounts that seemed to belong to his government.
"He said: "There wasn't a distinction between the accounts of the embassy, or official government accounts as we would call them, and the accounts of the royal family."
"Mr Caruso said he understood this had been going on for "years and years".
"'Hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars were involved," he added.
Found on War and Piece
SIRATYST (Stuff I Read and Thought You Should Too) -- “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.” (Calgacus, as quoted by Tacitus, Agricola 30-31)"
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