UK Jails Oil Businessman

 A UK court  sentenced a former senior manager at Dutch oil firm SBM Offshore to 3.5 years in jail for bribing Iraqi officials to win lucrative oil contracts in post-occupation Iraq.

Paul Bond became the fourth person convicted on Monday as a result of the UK’s Serious Fraud Office’s five-year probe into Monaco-based energy consultancy Unaoil, which was found to have secured $1.7 billion worth of contracts for itself and its Western partners by paying over $17 million in bribes.

“Bond and his co-conspirators manipulated the tendering process for an infrastructure project vital to Iraq’s developing economy, with no regard for the impact,’’ SFO Director Lisa Osofsky said.

Investigators found that Bond and Unaoil employees funneled $900,000 in bribes to Iraqi officials from the Ministry of Oil and the state-owned South Oil Company to access sensitive information that allowed them to skew the tendering process in their favour.

SBM won a $55 million contract.