Britain’s Lord Goldsmith specified, in a statement to the House of Lords, that pursuing the inquiry risked causing “serious damage” to the UK’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, a key ally in the war on terror. This, in his opinion, “outweighed the need to maintain the rule of law.”

British newspaper The Daily Telegraph applauded the government’s decision to halt the investigation but slammed the SFO for “taking it upon itself to make the 2001 Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act – which does outlaw such payments – retrospective.” According to the same source, this served not only to incense “a major ally in the war on terror” but also jeopardized “a highly valuable contract” from Britain's largest foreign defence customer putting “thousands of defence industry jobs at risk.”

The Guardian took the opposite view writing: “The rule of law … surely requires that the executive does not intervene in the operation of the course of justice.”

To read more about this case, please see the spotlight section on TI’s homepage at: www.transparency.org