A British former prosecutor who led an investigation into the corrupt brothers at the heart of a global cash-for-contracts scandal won his case for unfair dismissal after being fired over a row with an FBI officer in a London pub.
Tom Martin challenged the UK's Serious Fraud Office after a tribunal found that US agencies wanted him removed from his post. The case involved a dispute over the handling of an international case against the Ahsani brothers, who ran the Monaco-based consultancy Unaoil.
Mr Martin, who led the British side of the inquiry into Unaoil, was sacked in December 2018 over allegations that he swore at an FBI agent and called him a spy and a quisling after a meeting about the case at the US embassy in London.
Mr Martin claimed that the US and lawyers for the brothers wanted him removed from the case to thwart British efforts to extradite Saman Ahsani to Britain from Rome in 2018.
The employment tribunal found that Mr Martin probably did not use expletives and said that no reasonable employer should ignore the possibility that a delayed complaint into the incident could be triggered by ulterior motives. The SFO said that it was considering the judgment and its options.
Mr Ahsani, the former chief operating officer of Unaoil, was subsequently sent to the US where he struck a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty, and a reduced sentence in return for providing information.
His brother, Unaoil's former chief executive Cyrus Ahsani, pled guilty to being part of a multimillion-dollar bribery scam over two decades to help major western companies win projects in the Middle East, central Asia and Africa.
Three former Unaoil executives were sentenced to jail in the UK last year after a five-year inquiry by the SFO for bribing officials to clinch oil projects in Iraq worth $1.7 billion.
But the Ahsanis slipped through their hands and a judge last year rebuked the US head of the SFO for her dealings with a private investigator who was employed by the Ahsanis.
This month the SFO lost a court battle over its attempts to secure documents from US engineering company KBR as part of a connected corruption inquiry.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
ODI FIXTURE SCHEDULE
First ODI, October 22
Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai
Second ODI, October 25
Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, Pune
Third ODI, October 29
Venue TBC
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Day 4, Abu Dhabi Test: At a glance
Moment of the day Not much was expected – on Sunday or ever – of Hasan Ali as a batsman. And yet he lit up the late overs of the Pakistan innings with a happy cameo of 29 from 25 balls. The highlight was when he launched a six right on top of the netting above the Pakistan players’ viewing area. He was out next ball.
Stat of the day – 1,358 There were 1,358 days between Haris Sohail’s previous first-class match and his Test debut for Pakistan. The lack of practice in the multi-day format did not show, though, as the left-hander made an assured half-century to guide his side through a potentially damaging collapse.
The verdict As is the fashion of Test matches in this country, the draw feels like a dead-cert, before a clatter of wickets on the fourth afternoon puts either side on red alert. With Yasir Shah finding prodigious turn now, Pakistan will be confident of bowling Sri Lanka out. Whether they have enough time to do so and chase the runs required remains to be seen.
