The British government's top lawyer on Friday denied a newspaper report that he ordered knowledge of secret defence contract payments to be concealed from an international watchdog investigating corruption.
Attorney General Peter Goldsmith told Sky News: "I categorically deny the allegation that the Guardian is making, that I ordered investigators to conceal payments from the OECD.
"That allegation is completely untrue." The Guardian reported on Friday that Goldsmith knew about "more than one billion pounds" of secret payments made to Prince Bandar bin Sultan in connection with a BAE Systems defence contract, but ordered British investigators to conceal that information from the Paris-based OECD, a corruption watchdog. The Guardian said the money was paid into bank accounts controlled by Prince Bandar, a former ambassador to the United States, for his role in lining up BAE Systems with Britain's biggest arms deal, known as the al-Yamamah arms contract.
Prince Bandar denies those allegations and BAE has denied any wrongdoing in connection with the al-Yamamah deal. The Guardian said it had established that Goldsmith warned colleagues last year that "government complicity" in the payment of the sum was in danger of being revealed by investigators from the Serious Fraud Office if their probe was allowed to continue. Britain's Serious Fraud Office dropped a two-year investigation into the al-Yamamah deal in December 2006 after it was told the probe risked jeopardising "national and international security".
Goldsmith told Sky he agreed with the decision to drop the investigation on national security grounds. "The Ministry of Defence, which is the responsible department, has made it clear that it considers the United Kingdom as bound by confidentiality provisions in relation to the al-Yamamah contract," he said.
"It's not for me to breach those confidentiality provisions. Still less when, as the MoD has said, that risks the very national security concerns which led to the director of the Serious Fraud Office stopping this investigation."
Asked whether the decision to close the investigation was in effect evidence of guilt in the issue, Goldsmith replied: "The director of the Serious Fraud Office who made that decision has made it absolutely plain, I and the solicitor-general have made it plain, and his reason, the director's reason, was because of the serious risk to national security on the advice of those whose job it is to care about the interests of people in this country and their lives."