Bribery conviction quashed after UK’s SFO denied defendant fair trial

The Court of Appeal on Friday quashed the conviction of a former oil and gas executive jailed for bribery last year after the judges ruled the UK’s Serious Fraud Office had denied him the right to a fair trial and withheld potentially embarrassing evidence.

The ruling will heap further pressure on Lisa Osofsky, the anti-corruption agency’s director, who had already come in for strong criticism of her handling of the case in the original trial last year. Her behaviour will now form part of an investigation by the SFO, which it had put on hold until after the appeal.

In a blistering judgment, the three appeal judges overturned the conviction of Ziad Akle, a former executive at Unaoil, an oil and gas consultancy, who had been given a five-year jail term. The court found that Akle did “not have a fair trial” after the SFO had “handicapped the defence”.

In a statement the SFO said it was reviewing the judgment but declined to comment on Osofsky’s position. It confirmed it “remained committed” to the probe of its director and her colleagues.

The SFO was castigated by the judges for allowing David Tinsley, a Miami-based investigator representing the founding family of Unaoil, which was at the centre of the agency’s bribery probe, to become embroiled in its case.

Osofsky and other SFO colleagues met and exchanged messages with Tinsley, who was acting for the Ahsani family, throughout the Unaoil investigation. Tinsley told Osofsky and the SFO he could persuade Akle and Basil Al-Jarah, another suspect, who he did not represent, to plead guilty in return for a lenient deal for his own clients.

US prosecutors, who were conducting a parallel probe into Unaoil, ultimately secured a plea-bargain with brothers Saman and Cyrus Ahsani, in 2019. Their father, Ata Ahsani, paid a penalty of $2.25m to US authorities and faced no further action, according to Friday’s ruling.

The judges said: “Tinsley was the last person whom the SFO should have allowed, or caused, to undertake the role of trying to persuade [Akle and Basil Al-Jarah] to plead guilty.”

The judges said they could understand why Osofsky “may have been willing to have an initial meeting with Tinsley”, but “simply [did] not understand” how she and SFO colleagues had seen it appropriate to let him become embroiled in Akle’s case.

The judges said the SFO had also withheld evidence about its meetings and phone calls with Tinsley. There was “a material failure of disclosure which significantly handicapped the defence”, according to the ruling.

The judges ruled the agency’s “refusal” to provide Akle’s legal team with details of those contacts with Tinsley was “a serious failure by the SFO to comply with their duty.” Although they did not believe there was a deliberate cover-up.

The failure was “particularly regrettable given that some of the documents had a clear potential to embarrass the SFO”, it said.

The SFO was refused the chance to retry Akle. The court said the appeal had succeeded because of “fault on the part of the prosecutor”, adding Akle was “a man in poor health who has already spent a significant time in prison in unusually difficult circumstances”.

Campaigners have called for a public inquiry into the events. Anti-corruption group Spotlight on Corruption said: “This is a devastating setback for the SFO”, adding it “must lead to an immediate independent and judge-led review of what went wrong, and who is responsible.”

In a statement released on Friday one of Akle’s lawyers, Jonathan Pickworth, said: “This is catastrophic for the SFO. If the agency is to have any future, then Lisa Osofsky’s position as director is no longer tenable . . . This was her own doing, and a problem of her own making.”

The judges denied the other appellant, Paul Bond, a former sales manager at SBM Offshore, one of Unaoil’s clients, leave to appeal against his sentence. He was one of three people convicted alongside Akle. His lawyers said they planned to lodge an appeal against his conviction after Friday’s ruling.