A Saudi prince who negotiated a £40bn arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia received secret payments for over a decade, a BBC probe has found.
The UK’s biggest arms dealer, BAE Systems, paid hundreds of millions of pounds to the ex-Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

The payments were made with the full knowledge of the Ministry of Defence.

Prince Bandar would not comment on the investigation and BAE systems said they acted lawfully at all times.

The MoD said information about the Al Yamamah deal was confidential. Up to £120m a year was sent by BAE from the UK into two Saudi embassy accounts in Washington. There wasn’t a distinction between the accounts of the embassy or official government accounts

The BBC’s Panorama programme has established that these accounts were actually a conduit to Prince Banda for his role in the 1985 deal to sell more than 100 warplanes to Saudi.

The purpose of one of the accounts was to pay the expenses of the Prince’s private Airbus.

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