Former Unaoil executive sentenced over Iraq bribery worth $1.7bn

A British former executive at Monaco-based oil and gas consultancy Unaoil has been sentenced to three years and four months in jail for bribing Iraqi public officials to clinch $1.7bn worth of oil projects in post-occupation Iraq. Iraqi-born Basil al-Jarah, Unaoil’s former Iraq country manager, admitted to paying $17m in bribes to secure contracts to construct oil pipelines, an oil platform and offshore mooring buoys in the Gulf, as the war-torn nation tried to shore up a battered economy after the fall of ex-president Saddam Hussein in 2003. It is the third sentence handed down by a London judge after a five-year investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and United States authorities into how the prominent Ahsani family, which ran Unaoil, secured energy contracts for Western blue-chip clients in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia. Former Unaoil managers Stephen Whiteley, 55, and 45-year-old Ziad Akle have already been sentenced to three and five years in jail respectively after a London trial. style="width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0; bottom: 0; right: 0; left: 0;">