{"id":68311,"date":"2006-12-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2006\/12\/16\/lenquete-sur-yamamah-arretee-in-extremis-par-blair-tout-seul\/"},"modified":"2006-12-16T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-12-16T00:00:00","slug":"lenquete-sur-yamamah-arretee-in-extremis-par-blair-tout-seul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2006\/12\/16\/lenquete-sur-yamamah-arretee-in-extremis-par-blair-tout-seul\/","title":{"rendered":"L’enqu\u00eate sur Yamamah<\/em> arr\u00eat\u00e9e in extremis<\/em> par Blair tout seul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Il appara\u00eet que la d\u00e9cision d’arr\u00eater l’enqu\u00eate en Suisse sur le scandale Yamamah<\/em> a \u00e9t\u00e9 prise en catastrophe, par Blair lui-m\u00eame, parce qu’elle \u00e9tait sur le point d’aboutir au cur du probl\u00e8me : l’implication directe de membres de la famille royale saoudienne. (Selon The Times<\/em> du 15 d\u00e9cembre<\/a> : The Prime Minister said that he took full responsibility for the decision to drop the Serious Fraud Office inquiry into bribery allegations involving arms manufacturer BAE Systems.<\/em>\u00bb) Il s’agit donc du cas exemplaire d’une enqu\u00eate sur un \u00e9norme fait de corruption internationale arr\u00eat\u00e9e par le pouvoir politique mais plus pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment, on va le voir, par un homme politique, parce qu’elle va faire appara\u00eetre le fait au grand jour.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tEn tout \u00e9tat de cause, il \u00e9tait impensable, de son propre point de vue, que Blair s’envole dans sa tourn\u00e9e moyen-orientale dont il esp\u00e8re un renouveau de son statut diplomatique avec cette affaire en pleine exposition publique du cas Al Yamamah<\/em>. Il aurait risqu\u00e9 de se voir refuser l’acc\u00e8s \u00e0 certains pays arabes.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLe Guardian<\/em> expose aujourd’hui<\/a> les derniers instants de l’enqu\u00eate du Serious Fraud Office (SFO), avant que la d\u00e9cision du Premier ministre soit signifi\u00e9e \u00e0 ce m\u00eame SFO.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00abA brutal moment came last Tuesday for the 15-strong team from the Serious Fraud Office, led by assistant director Helen Garlick. The team’s leaders were ordered down to Lord Goldsmith’s offices in Buckingham Gate with their boxes of files. These contained the fruit of more than two years’ digging into allegations that huge Saudi bribes had been paid by arms group BAE Systems to get weapons deals.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbIn Switzerland, in the federal prosecutors’ office in Berne, another box of files was also sitting, waiting to be collected. It was the hottest potato of all. The Swiss dossier contained print-outs of BAE’s recent offshore banking transactions with key Saudi middlemen. The normally highly-secret bank records had recently been secured by the authorities at the British investigators’ request.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbThe SFO believed the banking files could unlock the answer to three questions: Were members of the Saudi royal family receiving secret British pay-offs? Were offences committed under UK law? And had BAE lied to the Department of Trade and Industry to get insurance cover when the company recently claimed it had cleaned up its act and got rid of its confidential Saudi agents?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbBut the events of the next 48 hours ensured that the SFO would not be allowed to collect those files. Instead came a sudden harsh lesson in the realities of power and politics in Blairite Britain.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbIn trawling through the case-papers, the attorney general appears to have had both an agenda and a careful timetable. Within 48 hours, he had informed his own law enforcement officers that there were severe technical and legal difficulties in bringing any prosecution.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbHis timetable, critics suggest, required him to make his statement on the day the Diana death inquiry was published, which would distract attention. Even more significantly, the announcement allows the prime minister to depart for the Middle East this weekend with the SFO’s surrender in his pocket.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tIl faut insister sur la solitude et l’extr\u00eame urgence, voire l’improvisation de la d\u00e9cision de Blair, notamment sans consultation du reste du gouvernement. (Il semble d’ailleurs que le reste du gouvernement n’ait appris la nouvelle qu’une fois celle-ci prise et, pour certains des ministres, qu’une fois qu’elle ait \u00e9t\u00e9 rendue publique.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tUn point remarquable de ce point de vue de la situation politique britannique est le complet silence de Gordon Brown dans cette affaire Yamamah<\/em>, depuis octobre dernier, alors que le Tr\u00e9sor a son mot \u00e0 dire dans ce genre d’enqu\u00eate. Brown s’est gard\u00e9 de s’impliquer de quelque fa\u00e7on que ce soit dans l’affaire, surtout dans le dernier \u00e9pisode et sa retentissante conclusion. Prudence bien connue du Chancelier de l’Echiquier, probable successeur de Blair, et indication implicite que de possibles retomb\u00e9es ou relances de cette affaire sont possibles, o\u00f9 il ne veut pas \u00eatre impliqu\u00e9.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tDans le cas Yamamah<\/em>, Blair est tout seul, une fois de plus. Il s’agit moins d’une affaire de grande politique britannique que d’une affaire politicienne, o\u00f9 l’on trouve \u00e0 nouveau la position si particuli\u00e8re du Premier ministre britannique laiss\u00e9 \u00e0 ses diverses implications et manigances britanniques par le reste du gouvernement, et lui-m\u00eame manoeuvrant seul, sans le moindre souci de ce gouvernement, alors qu’il se trouve en instance de d\u00e9part.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tMis en ligne le 16 d\u00e9cembre 2006 \u00e0 05H40<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Il appara\u00eet que la d\u00e9cision d’arr\u00eater l’enqu\u00eate en Suisse sur le scandale Yamamah a \u00e9t\u00e9 prise en catastrophe, par Blair lui-m\u00eame, parce qu’elle \u00e9tait sur le point d’aboutir au cur du probl\u00e8me : l’implication directe de membres de la famille royale saoudienne. (Selon The Times du 15 d\u00e9cembre : The Prime Minister said that he… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3259,705,4038,3471,6219,6220,4364],"class_list":["post-68311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-arabie","tag-blair","tag-brown","tag-scandale","tag-sfo","tag-suisse","tag-yamamah"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}