Might the Arms Trade Treaty be useful in stopping the worst arms exports?

Nicholas Gilby, 16 January 2016

Two members of the Control Arms campaign – Amnesty International and Saferworld – are to be congratulated on commissioning an expert legal opinion to assess the lawfulness of the authorisation by the United Kingdom of weapons and related items for export to Saudi Arabia in the context of Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen.

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Is the UK’s arms trade with Saudi Arabia a breach of the Arms Trade Treaty?

Nicholas Gilby, 27 January 2015

Is the UK Government now ignoring Arms Trade Treaty obligations by continuing to trade arms with repressive regimes? This was the question asked by the Control Arms campaign on 16 January 2015. They think the answer is yes, but unfortunately it appears to be no, as I will explain.

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New document published: Saudi Arabian Air Defence Assistance Project Memorandum of Understanding

Nicholas Gilby, 30 July 2014

As I have explained in previous posts on this blog (see here and here) there has been no effective Parliamentary scrutiny of the Ministry of Defence’s Government-to-Government arms deals with Saudi Arabia. These deals have now been the subject of two Serious Fraud Office investigations, one still on-going.

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New documents published: How a Saudi Prince sued a British arms company for his commission

Nicholas Gilby, 22 July 2014

Britain’s biggest arms company, BAE Systems, has enjoyed an uninterrupted and lucrative commercial relationship with Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defence and Aviation for half a century. In the deal which started the relationship (agreed in 1965), BAE’s predecessor, the British Aircraft Corporation, was one of three British prime contractors, along with Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) […]

New documents published: British Government discussions about involvement in corruption in Saudi arms deals

Nicholas Gilby, 10 July 2014

A recent article in the Financial Times (republished by Gulf News here) states that the Serious Fraud Office has made arrests during its on-going investigation of the Airbus Group subsidiary GPT Special Project Management Limited. The company is the prime contractor on the Saudi Arabian National Guard Communications (SANGCOM) project, a Government-to-Government arms deal supervised […]

The Ministry of Defence, the Saudi Arabian National Guard Communications project, and a Lebanese agent

Nicholas Gilby, 1 July 2014

In a recent article on the Exaro News website David Pallister and Frederika Whitehead write about the part of my book which describes the proposed arrangements for agency fees behind one of Britain’s arms deals with Saudi Arabia. This deal, known as the Saudi Arabian National Guard Communications project, or SANGCOM for short, has been […]