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For 21 years allegations of kickbacks have swirled round the biggest arms deal in history - Al Yamamah, the dove of peace/nEver since Mrs Thatcher stepped off her plane resplendent in a Tory blue suit and veiled hat to greet the Saudi King and seal the Tornado warplane sale, the story has generated acres of speculation in newsprint and hours of broadcast time./nRumours about her own son, Marks role as a broker have featured large in the headlines./nBut until Panorama broke the story of secret payments into accounts controlled by Prince Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States, no journalists had got to the heart of the matter./nWe have provided for the first time details of the mechanism involving BAE Systems with the approval of the British Ministry of Defence in the transfer of hundreds of millions of pounds into accounts controlled by Prince Bandar./nIt took the Panorama team, myself and colleagues James Oliver and Guy Smith several months of exhaustive research and filming to untangle the threads./nThere were many long meetings with our well-placed sources who in this politically sensitive story did not want to appear in our film./nBut as always in a tale involving allegations of fraud or corruption the maxim is follow the money./nSo that is what we did. It took us to Switzerland, France, Germany and America where we met an ex-secret service investigator - David Caruso./nSpotters all over the globe have monitored the movement of Prince Bandars luxury Airbus over the years/nMr Caruso had never spoken before in detail before about the Saudi embassy accounts he was asked to look at in 2003 by Riggs Bank - bankers to Prince Bandar and his embassy in Washington./nMr Caruso confirmed to us that the accounts we were interested in had been used as a personal piggy bank by the Prince./nThe probe had started post 9/11 when most of the hijackers turned out to be Saudis and there were suspicions they might have been receiving funding via the Saudi embassy./nفلم وثائقي عن أحد رؤوس الفساد في السعوديه, بندر بن سلطان/n12.06.2007

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http://www.arabiatube.com/video/6763/Panorama--Princes-Planes-and-Pay-offs


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