Original subtitles

[♪]

[Nick] I mean, the whole thing was like out of a spy novel.

I travelled halfway around the world

for a clandestine meeting with a shadowy figure.

We all know, or at least we suspect,

some shady things happen

in business deals around the world,

in dark corners,

a wink and a nod, a briefcase full of cash...

...but in all my years of reporting on corruption,

I had no idea how vast, how pervasive it could be.

I was at work one day,

and there was a letter sent from somewhere overseas,

lots of stamps on it,

and it was a typed letter.

No one signed it, or no name,

it was almost like

you cut out the letters and you stick them on,

and it basically had instructions,

"If you want to get the biggest corruption story in the world,

hide a secret code in an advertisement

in a French newspaper."

It was intriguing,

but I didn't know who this guy was,

uh, and he wouldn't meet.

He was refusing to meet or identify himself.

All I knew was he had significant information.

He was extremely scared.

He went through this elaborate series of steps

to protect his identity.

This said to me,

"If this man is so scared,

he must be sitting on some pretty serious secrets."

[♪]

[cash register dings]

[♪]

[Nick McKenzie] Iraq has the fifth-largest oil reserve

in the world.

Countries and companies

have been scrambling for a century

to get their hands on it.

[newsreel] The Iraq Petroleum Company's new pipeline

from Kirkuk to Baniyas

passes not far from the ruins of the ancient city of Palmyra.

What was once a local marble arch

is now only a monument to the past.

[♪]

[Nick] For decades,

Saddam Hussein siphoned off his country's oil wealth

with rampant corruption.

[jets flying over]

Then the criminal mastermind fell.

And it was so hopeful at first.

Iraq's billions of dollars' worth of oil

was going to help rebuild the country.

Think about this.

The West went to war in Iraq,

Australian soldiers, American soldiers.

People died fighting to liberate Iraq.

Iraqi exiles returned to lead the country

and bring some semblance of legitimacy

to this long-corrupt regime.

[reporter] By invitation, about 80 Iraqis

representing different ethnic, regional, and religious groups

met with the newly returned Iraqi exiles

to start the work of planning an interim government.

[Nick] The new Minister of Oil,

Hussain al-Shahristani,

instituted a literally transparent system

for oil contracts,

a glass box with bids from foreign companies.

[applause]

A few years later,

a major pipeline was finally in development

that would nearly triple the county's oil exports.

Iraq's Prime Minister at the time,

along with his Deputy Prime Minister for Energy,

and other executives,

ceremonially opened the project.

[applause]

This was huge news in Australia.

Shares in Australia's biggest construction firm,

Leighton Holdings, soared today,

up 39% on last year.

[reporter] The workers on this Australian barge

are assembling a new undersea pipeline,

the biggest export expansion in Iraq's oil history.

[Nick] Leighton built this country.

This was the gem of Australia.

[reporter] Leighton says

it expects to return to profitability in 2012

after being awarded

a $4.5-billion contract in December.

The promise of jam tomorrow went down well with investors.

[Nick] But during a six-month investigation,

I discovered

that many of Leighton's overseas contracts,

including some in Iraq,

were won through bribery.

[reporter] Leighton is being investigated

by the federal police

over allegations of paying bribes

to help win business in Iraq.

[Nick] When my story was published,

it sent shockwaves around the country.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported

building giant Leighton was rife with corruption,

and they disclosed evidence

of massive bribery and corruption

in the way their contracts were being won around the world.

[reporter] There's been a flood of evidence

of foreign bribery

sanctioned by top executives at Leighton Holdings.

Leighton Holdings has sacked a senior manager

over the alleged Iraq bribery scandal.

[Nick] Leighton executives deny any wrongdoing,

but I knew someone in Iraq was on the take.

I just didn't know how the money was getting to them.

The answer came

from my mysterious new whistleblower,

who had asked me to place an ad

in a French newspaper, Le Figaro.

"Put a code name in that real estate ad."

So I did it for a house on Sydney Harbour.

The code name is "Montechristo"

and include my details to contact me,

so I nicknamed my source "Figaro," Le Figaro.

After a few days,

he reached out, and we began to correspond.

He said, "Okay, come to Paris.

Meet me here,

and then I'll tell you the secrets."

I flew all the way to the other end of the world.

I was meeting this secret source.

I had no idea whether they were a man, a woman,

if they were young, old.

I agreed to meet him outside the Louvre.

He said, "There's a red newsstand.

I'll be holding a newspaper, you'll know it's me."

He doesn't show.

I'm left there like an idiot,

'cause I've flown halfway around the world at great expense

thinking that I've got the story of a lifetime,

and I have nothing.

So I sent him messages and said,

"Man, you have screwed me over here.

"I'm stuck here. Probably gonna lose my job.

"I've spent all this money getting here,

and for what?

You stood me up. Thanks for nothing."

He said, "Okay, let's not make it Paris.

Come to Marseille."

So I got a train down to Marseille.

At the arranged meeting time, a black car pulls up...

...door opens, and there's my mysterious Figaro.

I could tell he was looking at me, going,

"Who the hell is this Australian?

He looks about five years old.

Is he the guy I should be trusting

to unlock this story?"

[Figaro] It's true that I was nervous.

Look, this involved

some of the biggest companies in the world,

some of the most powerful politicians in the world.

If this really came out,

I knew both Nick and I would have targets on our backs.

[Nick] He explained to me how it worked.

You've got these multinational

oil and engineering companies.

They want access to billion-dollar contracts

in places like Iraq.

The people who sign those contracts,

well, sometimes they want something in return.

Now, what I didn't know was

there's this thriving industry

of middlemen, of bag men,

who know how to bribe and who to bribe,

and they insulate everyone else who's involved.

[Figaro] I said, "I work for the middlemen.

I know who paid the bribes,

not just for the Australian company,

but for so many other companies."

But these were big companies, powerful companies,

and I was scared.

I wasn't ready to give away the details.

It was like a game.

He was dangling information before me

but not giving it to me.

And he kept saying, "Nick,

there's a hard drive with all these secrets on it,

these thousands and thousands of emails

with hard evidence of corruption in them."

You know, I left that meeting thinking,

"I've gotta get that hard drive."

[Alexandra Wrage] It frustrates me

that people see corruption as a victimless crime.

I worry that people don't take the issue

seriously enough,

and it's doing extraordinary damage

in huge swaths of the world.

I suspect that most of you

have had to debate, at some point,

whether bribery is just inevitable,

"the way business is done,"

"it really just amounts to a tax,"

or the really tired phrase,

"it's really just a victimless crime."

A Chechen woman bribed airport officials

for just a thousand rubles,

about $34,

enabling her

to sneak explosives onto the plane.

[woman crying out]

[charges detonating]

Bribery contributes to countless disasters.

It enables the illegal wildlife trade.

It's central to drug smuggling...

to gun-running...

human trafficking...

sex slavery.

There are real consequences to bribery.

If people break into your house and steal jewellery,

you call the police, you feel outrage.

There's this general sense that you have been violated,

but there are whole countries stealing all of the jewellery,

and there isn't that same level of outrage.

I spend my career traveling the world

working to track and expose and combat bribery.

I don't think I've ever seen a place

as rife with corruption as Iraq.

It's almost overwhelming.

You can see it in the shoddy and half-built buildings,

the poverty in the streets,

and all of this

in one of the most oil-rich countries in the world.

Over the last few years,

Iraq has seen huge protests over corruption,

hundreds of thousands of young people

marching in Tahrir Square in Baghdad.

Alaa al-Sattar was one of them.

[chanting]

[Alaa al-Sattar speaking]

What did it feel like here?

That's the worst thing you can say

in this country, isn't it?

- Yes. - Yeah.

How does corruption affect your life,

you, personally?

[speaking in Arabic]

[speaking in English]

[Wrage] Alaa wanted me to meet his friend, Mohammed,

who's been a leader in the anti-corruption protests.

He lost both a hand and a leg

while fighting ISIS in Iraq.

But we heard stories about, you know,

the Americans coming in with so much cash, so much money.

[speaking in Arabic]

Is corruption

a more formidable enemy than ISIS?

You have some videos from the protests.

Can I look at them?

Yes. Of course.

I have many.

This just seems outrageous to me,

that you protected the Iraqi people from ISIS,

you paid an incredible price for that.

You shouldn't have to fight that hard for your country.

[Alexandra] The amount of money that's being paid by the corrupt

through bribery

is an extraordinary sum.

It's been put over $1 trillion a year,

and generating more anger about that,

more indignation about that

is important to me.

For a long time, bribery was just considered

to be a cost of doing business.

It was like any other expense.

It could be deducted from your taxes,

like any other expense.

All of this came out

during a Congressional hearing in Washington today,

and Lockheed officials deny

that they were using taxpayers' money for the foreign payments.

Under the circumstances,

it's a cost of winnin' a competition.

Then why isn't that a bribe?

If a payment is made by Lockheed

in order to secure that sale,

why isn't that a bribe?

I prefer to call them a kickback,

but you can characterise it the way you want.

Go ahead.

Uh, my counsel, uh,

says he prefers to characterise it

as a kickback,

but, uh, you know... - [crowd noise]

...if you want to call it bribes,

then, uh, I guess it's all right.

The U.S. was among the first countries

to say "No.

Doing business internationally,

you cannot pay off government officials overseas,"

and they made that statement in 1977,

with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,

but companies were on notice that their conduct,

paying bribes

as an absolute routine course of doing business,

that had to change.

[reporter] Alexandra Wrage

is the President of TRACE International,

an anti-corruption firm,

and literally wrote the book on fighting bribery.

Alexandra is founder and president of TRACE Intl,

as well as a prolific author in her own right.

[Alexandra] I founded this organisation

to highlight the damage that bribery does,

and to help companies steer clear of corruption.

Welcome back. So, should the U.S. government

be prosecuting companies that pay bribes

in order to get business done in foreign countries?

[Alexandra] I was asked to come on CNBC

and give the anti-corruption argument,

and I remember laughing at the time, saying,

"well, is there somebody that you found

who's going to give the pro-corruption argument?"

[Trump] Now, every other country

goes into these places,

and they do what they have to do.

The sad part,

every other country in the world is doing it.

We're not allowed to.

So it puts us at a huge disadvantage.

There it is! Is he right?

Are payoffs just a fact of life in many countries?

Well, the answer is certainly

not encouraging a climate of lawlessness.

U.S. companies never benefit from lawlessness.

It's just mind-boggling

that anyone would make that argument,

but Trump actually tried to get rid of the FCPA

as soon he became President.

Ahem!

"In the spring of 2017,

Trump perked up at the mention of bribes

and got rather agitated.

He then told Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

he wanted him to help

get rid of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act."

Quote, "It is just so unfair

that American companies are not allowed to pay bribes

to get business overseas," Trump told the group.

"We're going to change that."

We've all heard people like Trump say

that it's a stupid law

and that it puts American companies at a disadvantage,

because Chinese companies and Russian companies

and others can pay bribes.

It would be more profitable

to be able to dump sewage into rivers

and to hire child labour,

but nobody is arguing that we should be doing that.

In the end, it is just a grubby act of crime.

[anchor] Breaking news this morning out of Iraq,

where at least 82 people have been killed

in a fire at a hospital in Baghdad.

[Alexandra] It's insidious.

Corruption taints everything,

and in some really unexpected ways.

[British reporter] The Iraqi PM has fired

key officials over the incident,

blaming negligence by authorities.

[Alexandra] I met an Iraqi journalist,

Nermeen al-Mufti,

and she took me out to the site of that fire,

which was tied directly to corruption.

Is this it here?

[speaking in English]

And the fire was attributed to corruption.

How does, how does that fit into the story?

- As a crime? - Yes.

- And rooted in corruption? - Yes.

[Alexandra] Nermeen introduced me to the head

of an Iraqi journalist association

to show me another impact of bribery in her country.

You advocate for press freedom in Iraq.

Is there freedom to report

on corruption, specifically corruption?

[speaking in Arabic]

[gunfire]

[Nick] Reporting on corruption is dangerous,

and it's damn hard to report on,

since it's all done in the shadows.

That's why I was so excited about this leak from Figaro.

After months of negotiation,

I finally got my hands on the evidence.

When the hard drive arrived,

I did a search on how many files I'd have to go through.

I think it was 317,000.

And I remember this Italian reporter saying to me,

"Nick, having a million files is as good as having no files."

And at the time, I thought, "Well, man, fuck you.

I can get through this."

I started to go through the emails

literally one by one,

just all these thousands and thousands of emails

with corruption, hard evidence of corruption in them,

the officials who were being bribed,

the executives at the big Western companies

who were directing those bribes to be paid,

and it all points

to this small company I'd never heard of

called "Unaoil."

[reporter] Unaoil brokers contracts between

governments and international oil service giants.

[reporter] Unaoil has worked as an agent

for multinationals

like Rolls-Royce, Samsung,

Halliburton, Hyundai,

and the offshore arm

of Australia's Leighton Holdings.

[reporter] This company was formed in Monaco in 1991.

[reporter] ...an oil-industry consulting firm

run by Monaco millionaires.

Bribe-paying was the family business.

But who are the people behind these bribes?

[Figaro] Unaoil's role was to help Western clients

get deals in the oil sector around the world,

especially in the Middle East.

It was founded by Ata Ahsani.

He was an Iranian ex-pat and a skilled engineer.

Ata Ahsani seemed like a man

who'd come from nothing to everything.

[Figaro] Then he brought his sons into the business.

[Nick] Cyrus was a mover and shaker,

a bit of a playboy.

Elite education at the best schools.

He had a taste for the finer things in life.

Saman was a more serious, more business-minded brother.

He thought he was the business brains.

And then we could see both Cyrus and Saman,

absolutely, they deferred to their father, Ata.

Ata was the godfather of the family,

the patriarch.

He and his sons hobnobbed with billionaires and royalty.

They did have

Prince Albert of Monaco attending their function.

They did have Richard Branson attending their functions.

It's in a lovely setting,

a beautiful evening, nice and cool.

[Nick] Celebrities, powerful business people there,

giving them money, slapping them on the back.

24,000!

[applause]

Absolutely, I have to say, on behalf of my father,

who is the chairman

of the Unaoil Energy Children's Fund,

that I think tonight was a success.

[Nick] The Ahsanis' mission was to build themselves up

as these generous, wonderful people of Monaco,

and they pulled it off.

This was clearly gonna be a huge investigation

against people with serious wealth

and serious connections,

so I brought my colleague Richard Baker

in to help me.

We only had one opportunity to speak with the Ahsanis,

just as we were starting our investigation,

and Richard made the call.

Give me, give me a listen.

- Ah... - Ata. Ata Ahsani.

[phone dials on recording]

[line ringing]

[call ends]

You can't be fairer than that.

- Yeah. - Straight to the point.

He seemed very, very cool and very calm.

Very cool. Very calm.

And he sold it. He sold a good story.

[Nick] But as we started to go through the emails,

a drastically different story emerged.

I started looking through documents

and saw references

to lots of companies that I recognised.

And then I noticed references to this strange term,

"holiday."

I mean, there were hundreds of them.

And the people involved in these holidays

had strange names, like

Lighthouse, Teacher,

Captain,

Doctor, The Big Cheese.

It dawned on me that these might be codes.

To discover the codes hidden in the emails was really exciting.

They were codes aimed at covering up

how many millions of dollars

these corrupt officials were getting,

and for me, that was manna from Heaven.

I wanted to find out who these people were,

and how much was going into their pockets.

We figured out that a "holiday"

was a $1-million bribe,

and each of the strange names

referred to prominent government or Unaoil officials

engaged in bribery.

Knowing the codes allowed us

to start cracking these e-mails open.

I mean, it was like a jigsaw puzzle.

You start with thousands of pieces,

nothing fits in.

And you fit one to another,

and slowly, you're saying, well, over here, in Iraq,

I can see that there's been a bribe paid for this contract,

and in Libya, there's a bribe paid over here,

and the whole picture, over time,

starts to take shape.

The puzzle taught me that

what my mysterious source, the Figaro, had promised,

that this was perhaps

one of the world's biggest bribery scandals, was true.

It's the first time

I've ever got outside counsel involved prior to a story.

[Bartlett] Yeah, they're incredible stories.

We have got millions of documents.

Now, this is all...

you've gone through all our bits and pieces?

Yeah. So... you've been through them.

We can't see any flaws in them, so...

it's really, really strong evidence.

Just things jumping out here,

"The best medicine for a calm life

is a dose of George Washington."

- [Bartlett laughs] - Why not?

Yeah, absolutely!

The real issue is

there are so many companies mentioned.

There are so many individuals mentioned.

Yeah, they could sue us for libel.

The Ahsanis could claim, "This is all made up.

There is no evidence."

[Bartlett] We need to assess the risk,

but, um, the documents stand for themselves.

These are incredible documents.

[Nick] There was just one more thing to check out.

In the documents,

I saw reference to this organisation, TRACE,

which had apparently granted Unaoil a certificate

that they had been vetted

and were members in good standing

of this anti-bribery organization.

TRACE, as an NGO,

its job was to fight against corruption,

and for Unaoil, this was

"We've got TRACE telling the world

that we are the good guys,

that we're not corrupt, that we have integrity,

that we're not paying bribes."

I rang the person who signed that certificate.

It was really early in the morning,

and the phone rang.

She picked up the phone. I said,

"My name's Nick McKenzie. I'm an investigative journalist,

and your organisation, you,

have given the stamp of "no corruption"

to one of the most corrupt companies in the world.

What... what the hell has happened?"

He just started asking a series of questions

about had we done a background review on Unaoil?

Did I have concerns about them,

and could I verify

that we had, in fact,

done this background check on Unaoil?

Which, um, I knew, off the top of my head,

that-that we had.

I could hear her going "Fuck!"

Because everything she stood for and everything TRACE stood for,

fighting corruption, reforming the world,

was on the line.

Most companies

are trying to get these things right

most of the time.

Very few companies are set up

almost entirely as criminal organisations.

It's a case study

on what can go wrong with compliance.

[Nick] I'd done all the outreach,

all the vetting, all the fact-checking.

We were ready to publish.

But I knew the minute we did,

they would be shredding files and burning laptops,

shutting down the whole corrupt operation,

so I could either publish my story

and have the shredders going hot in the Monaco offices of Unaoil,

or I could tell the police

that I intend to publish a story,

and say, "Listen, if I was you guys,

maybe you want to get in there

before those shredders start destroying evidence."

Surely, any sensible-minded criminal would destroy

probative evidence that would sink their ship.

Tom Martin emerges as...

I'll never forget talking to him.

Tom Martin was instantly aggressive

and full of energy.

He basically said, "Look,

you've got seven days, and I'm publishing,"

or ten days, whatever it was.

We were absolutely panic-stricken,

because it meant that we had 10 days

to actually do something,

because if these documents actually exist in situ,

they're going to destroy them,

so, um, yeah, the pressure was on.

So we got ourselves over to Monaco.

The Ahsanis were British citizens

and captured by the U.K.'s jurisdiction,

and so we enlisted

the assistance of the Monégasque Police.

I went to the main premises at Unaoil.

I think it was a bit of a shock.

I think it was probably quite a terrifying experience

for the staff.

In we go.

It's slightly unnerving for a Brit

to be on a search

where the search commander's looking very glamorous

with a Glock 9-millimeter strapped to her waist,

but you know, it's a lot for me,

as a, uh, slightly square criminal lawyer.

"Oh, what's going on?"

We gathered up all the relevant documents,

computers, laptops, mobile phones,

uh, even a server,

and we realised that we were sitting on

an absolute gold mine.

[Nick] With the evidence in the hands of the authorities,

we went to press with the Unaoil exposé.

It was wildly big.

Think about, you know,

just one reporter in Australia, a nobody,

taking on the oil industry,

the biggest corruption scandal in the oil industry.

We called it "The world's biggest bribery scandal."

[reporter] A Monaco-based energy services company,

Unaoil, is at the centre

of major bribery and corruption allegations.

The exposé alleges that that company

helped major international oil companies

pay bribes throughout the Middle East

in order to get oil deals.

Nick McKenzie is The Age newspaper's

investigative reporter who uncovered the scandal.

It's gonna be one of the biggest

global bribery investigations

that the world has seen in some time.

[speaking in Persian]

This is just an excellent piece of-of journalistic work.

[reporter] Reporters are calling it

"the biggest leak of files in the history

of the oil industry."

In the compliance community, this was an enormous case.

Actual real-time conversations

between fraudsters, between people

who were planning corrupt negotiations,

and their counterparts within companies.

We'd never had anything like that before.

This is bribery on a scale that had never been seen before.

It was epic.

Billions of dollars' worth of contracts.

It may even have been over a hundred billion in the end.

The figures were eye-watering,

and the level of corruption and manipulation

was on a scale that I'd never seen before.

We put together a team of lawyers,

investigators, accountants, computer experts.

Uh, there were about 50 of us who were doing this

in order to sift the material

and bring the Ahsanis to justice.

The U.K. government gave us 12 million pounds

in order to conduct

the investigation and prosecution,

understanding that it was an unprecedented case.

It was called Operation Pivot

because we saw Unaoil and the Ahsanis as the pivot.

We were getting, uh,

a throughput of information

that we'd never really seen before.

It was a unique set of documents,

a tantalising opportunity

to really break open

what was going on in the oil-and-gas sector.

[Alexandra] Tom Martin's role is to prosecute crimes.

Figaro's mission, as a whistleblower,

is to expose this corruption.

Nick's, as a journalist, to bring it to the public.

Mine is to try and help fix the system,

so I've embarked on this documentary

to show how pervasive bribery can be,

and how difficult it can be to root out.

- Alexandra, hi. - Nick. Hi.

Good to see you.

[Nick] I'm excited to work with you on this film,

and there's still so many questions,

like how the Ahsani sons

were inculcated into the business.

So dad's corrupt, we presume.

At what point does he say,

"Okay, boys, this is the way business is done"?

[Alexandra] So this is where you have it all mapped out.

This is... the Unaoil universe,

and to understand this universe is to understand the scandal.

It seemed like anyone who was anybody in the oil game

was hiring Unaoil to do their work,

so I was like, "Who the hell is Unaoil?"

At the centre,

we've got the heart of the Unaoil enterprise,

the Ahsani family,

the godfather, Ata Ahsani,

and his sons, Cyrus and Saman.

Who is Unaoil working for?

The companies...

biggest multinationals in the world.

Household names. - Yeah.

Big players in the oil industry.

Unaoil was doing its business

wherever there was that lucrative oil field...

Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Syria,

Tunisia, Algeria,

Yemen, Cameroon.

[Alexandra] Corruption hotspots.

[Nick] Every one of them, and of course,

their hub being Monaco,

what a nice place to live,

but also a stone's throw,

a quick flight, to many of their key markets.

Mm-hmm. It's not a very big organisation,

from what I can see.

If you're running an organised crime gang,

you keep it small.

Keeping it in the family was critical for Unaoil,

because who knew the secrets?

It was the Ahsanis,

and they thought those secrets would never be spilled.

The one person that laid the secret bare

is this guy, the whistleblower at the centre of this.

He worked for Unaoil,

and his code name is Le Figaro.

So eventually, you get an enormous tranche of emails.

And all these emails lay bare Unaoil's secrets.

You can see some bits and pieces over here.

They never said "bribe."

In fact, you could search

in these hundreds of thousands of emails

for the term "bribe", you're not gonna find it.

In fact all you'll find is them saying, "We don't pay bribes,"

and that was the most critical finding.

A "holiday" was a bribe.

"One day" was $1 million.

Yeah, it's a pretty good indication of guilt

when people start referring to their transactions by code.

So how did you go about cracking the code?

There was one critical email here.

The old man, Ata, he's got a bad memory.

Mm-hmm.

He needs to know who's who in the zoo,

what do the codes link to? He's forgotten.

So one of the Unaoil staff helpfully says,

"Well, "Lighthouse,"

that's senior Iraqi oil official Diaa Jaffa al-Mousawi."

Boom! We understand who Lighthouse is.

"The Spaghetti House" was a code for Eni,

large Italian company.

"Ivan." Oday al-Quraishi. Boom! We understand who Ivan is.

Why "Ivan"?

Do we know why they picked that as a code name?

He was called "Ivan" because he loves...

apparently loves Russian sex workers.

[Alexandra] Yeah, that's charming.

[Nick] Says a lot about the man.

So using these code names,

we then search across all the e-mails again,

and understand who's getting paid bribes,

and how.

Right here we have an email

to a man, code name, the Doctor.

"The net holiday allowed to you

is the biggest we've considered."

So what's this all about?

The Australian company Leighton hired Unaoil,

who worked with this intermediary,

who claimed he could reach powerful politicians

including the "Teacher."

And Unaoil said that,

"The Teacher is confident he can knock out"

Leighton's competitor

on a $733-million pipeline project.

What will help to do that

is this "holiday" to the Doctor.

How much is that? We jump to another email,

over to here,

$16,000,000, U.S.

One bribe, one person, one job.

So we're talking, you know, big, big bucks.

Huge scale.

But also, this is where I first see your name,

and TRACE, your organisation comes up.

I can see it. It's our TRACE certificate.

[Nick] We know what they thought of TRACE.

In this email here, they describe

"These TRACE wankers, just box-tickers,"

so they saw you as,

I mean, the good guys trying to do a job,

but they thought, "We can circumvent

these checks and balances that TRACE have in place."

It shows that they were absolutely playing,

playing the whole process.

Must make you pissed off.

More than a little pissed off.

[♪]

[Alexandra] Seeing so clearly

how the Ahsanis had worked the system,

I really wanted to go to Monaco

to find out how they'd done it.

It's a totally different world here.

You're among the wealthy. Right?

Right. The ultra-wealthy.

Yeah.

[Alexandra] I met with Lindsey Mitchell.

He was a former Unaoil employee,

and it was Lindsey who walked me through

how the company operated in Monaco.

So, describe Sammy for me, well, the whole family,

but start with Sammy, because he seems to be

the larger-than-life personality.

He definitely is.

He's one of these guys that doesn't really break a smile.

- Ah. - You know? He's a serious.

And Cyrus, he was the handsome, good-looking guy of the group,

and really laid back.

Was there pressure from the Ahsani family to pay bribes?

Yeah.

People want to understand.

People have to know how easy it is to fall prey

to the bribery side of the industry.

I can tell you, from my own experience.

The Ahsanis had me do it once in Libya.

Unaoil was trying to get a $45-million contract

with the national oil company.

They asked me to pass a thick envelope of cash

to a guy I knew at the Libyan company,

in exchange for intel on competing bids.

The whole thing made me sick.

The next day, I resigned,

and got on a plane and headed back to Canada,

and eventually cooperated with the authorities

against Unaoil.

[Alexandra] So, your cooperation with the authorities

must have infuriated the Ahsanis?

Yeah, you know, these people that have wealth,

that have been dealing with foreign governments

for a long time,

they are connected to people. - Connected, yes.

There seem to be a lot of people afraid of them.

Definitely.

And my family as well, have been very concerned.

Really? So you did have,

you had concerns for personal security?

Still, to this day.

It's like, "Is anything gonna happen?" You know?

Every time a car goes by, I look at the driver,

so, be aware.

You know? Be aware.

[Alexandra] So this is the building here?

[Lindsey] This is the old office.

[Alexandra] The scene of the crime, in my book.

[Lindsey] Yeah.

- After that first payment... - Yeah?

It would have just been a routine occurrence.

Totally.

I believe this about bribery, right?

You open the floodgates,

and now you've said to somebody on the other side,

"I'm willing to engage in this criminal activity with you."

It's an invitation.

Once you pay the first bribe, you're kind of married now.

- Yeah. - You're kind of married.

I think there are still people

who believe that you can pay just one bribe.

"I'll just do it this one time." Right?

And it doesn't work that way.

No, they keep on coming back for more.

Word gets out that you're willing to play along.

- Yeah. - Yeah, absolutely.

[Lindsey] So yeah, this was our day...

we, uh... come down through here,

and our office was right through here.

Sammy's here! I'm fucking off.

Yeah.

[Alexandra] Okay. He's going.

Sammy's here.

By the time I got up here,

Lindsey took off, and I got up here,

and I think he was standing right there.

I think he had seen him through there

and he was over by that...

I'd love to speak to Sammy. You know?

He, uh... he defrauded my company.

Where's Lindsey right now?

Where is he? I don't know.

He started walking that way, and...

[Lindsey] I said probably a phone call.

Sorry, Alexandra.

- No! No, no, no. - It was him.

It was Sammy.

- It was him? - 100%.

- Huh! Did you... - Same shirt he always wears.

He was walking this way.

So he was just chasing us off? Was that the idea?

He, uh...

It certainly was... was him.

- Yeah? - 100%.

[Nick] Anyone who came after the Ahsanis

was in the crosshairs,

including me.

As soon as the article was published,

they came after me and my company.

Unaoil was like a blinded boxer, just throwing punches,

trying to hit us... any way they could.

Well, what was their story?

The emails were... were fraudulent?

You had no business publishing them?

I mean, the emails told the story.

Yeah. "The emails are stolen."

We'd received stolen property.

"These guys, these journalists,

they're idiots, what would they know?"

"Unaoil's the victims of some international conspiracy."

They were feeding stories to reporters

that Figaro was not only a thief of company documents,

but that he was trying to extort the Ahsanis.

And it worked!

They were on the front page

of the national paper of Australia.

Day in and day out, day after day,

I was reading... it was bullshit.

It was trying to cast a cloud of doubt over our work,

and it was all fed by Unaoil.

It was effectively

a PR campaign disguised as journalism,

with one purpose,

to make Unaoil look clean

and the victim of our reporting,

and to make us the bad guys.

[footfalls echoing]

Peter!

- Hello. - Alexandra Wrage.

Very nice to meet you. - Very good to meet you.

[Alexandra] Pretty soon after this story broke,

there was some media discrediting Nick's source...

Hmm.

...that he had

stolen the emails

and used them to blackmail the Ahsanis,

so that he may be a whistleblower,

but he was also an extortionist.

I never knew the identity of the source.

Um, I don't know today the identity of the source.

Um, I never needed to know,

but I was confident, after talking to Nick,

that, um...

he was not involved in any improper activity at all.

The Australian newspaper

ran articles suggesting that somehow,

Fairfax Media might be working with this extortionist.

Oh, good grief.

It's laughable that people say that.

I know Figaro.

What sort of idiot conducts an extortion

and the next day goes to the media

and says, "investigate"?

It was more public relations nonsense

coming out of Unaoil.

That's how it was being used, obviously...

- Right.

...to discredit not only Nick,

but the credibility of the story.

[Nick] The whole extortion thing

is a big sideshow to distract everyone.

Unaoil is a crime gang,

and we exposed you, tough titties.

Like, that's it, at the end of the day.

[Figaro] Let me be clear, I was not the extortionist,

but I did hear about this,

and it could've been any number of people.

A few years before the article came out,

the Ahsanis were worried

there might be an investigation about their business deals,

so they sent a note out

that we need to put any incriminating emails

onto a central server,

and then had our laptops wiped.

This is all the evidence that these conspiracists,

these corrupt businessmen,

thought was gonna sink them.

For any kids at home

dreaming about being a corrupt businessman,

keeping detailed records of the bribes you paid,

who you paid them to,

all of the emails that you've sent regarding that,

it's an absolutely terrible idea.

[Figaro] I gave Nick this information.

Who knows who else had this information too?

Unaoil then gets this nuts email

from this person calling themselves "Komrade."

Russian, or pretending to be Russian.

"I have purchased much data about Unaoil

and all transactions..."

[actor as Komrade] You will go to prison.

If you do not agree to pay our fee,

I will send this data to many agencies,

WikiLeaks, news,

and my staff put on internet for everyone.

You, your father and brother

will likely face prison, or worse.

The alternative,

you pay us 5 million USD in Bitcoin.

My take on those emails

is that they were clearly concocted

by someone trying to pretend to be Russian,

and it caused a huge degree of panic

within, um, the Ahsanis' circle.

[Nick] Saman wrote back.

"We have agreed with you

that we will come to an arrangement

so that we can purchase from you

the data that was stolen from us."

The Ahsanis decided to pay

a small fraction of what Komrade asked for,

to buy some time.

[Komrade] You are a snake.

Your payment, a joke.

This is insult.

You want to fuck with us?

We reject your offer.

This really was trouble,

because you pay him $150,000 now,

he's gonna be asking for 10 million next time,

or whatever,

and they were thinking about how they could, uh,

make this into a binary situation

so that they didn't have to worry about it.

[Nick] This "binary situation,"

Tom's euphemism for "alive or dead,"

had the SFO concerned.

Behind the scenes,

one of the Ahsanis conjures up a plot

to threaten the extortionist.

So how did you uncover that?

Well, the U.K. authorities wrote to the Ahsanis,

uh, and their lawyers,

warning them, and say,

"Should evidence come to light

that confirms or establishes

your client's involvement in any criminal act,

then it will be dealt with accordingly."

Were they really gonna go

and get A Day of the Jackal style hit guy?

I didn't think so, but I was worried

that they thought that kind of stuff might be an option.

[Figaro] I never heard about this threat.

All I knew was

the propaganda story the Ahsanis used

to attack me and you.

[Nick] It felt like

it was me, you, and Tom Martin of the SFO

versus the world, a little bit.

Because they were saying "We're gonna sue"

me and the company that I work for,

for $100 million.

That would have bankrupted my company.

I would've brought down my entire newspaper,

and our legal counsel for the newspaper called me,

I'll never forget it, basically just saying,

"Nick, if you fucked up, it's over for you. It's over."

[Figaro] And then they come after me.

But then I called you up, and you-you reassured me,

and then I called up Tom Martin. He said to me,

"Hold tight, mate, just hold tight.

It's going to happen. They're corrupt.

Relax, calm down."

But a whole bunch of people got caught up in this.

You know, like TRACE.

Alexandra Wrage,

she feels like she was scammed by Unaoil

to help them achieve a corrupt aim,

and she's angry, I think.

[Figaro] Is she? Really?

TRACE's job was to kind of protect the system,

but in the end, they became kind of complicit.

When we accused Unaoil of corruption, they said,

"Oh, how can we be corrupt? TRACE."

[Figaro] They're either very naive,

or they're part of the game.

Yeah. All right, let's ask her.

She's come with me on this trip, and she wants to meet you.

Are you okay if she joins us?

[Figaro] Sure.

Hey there. I'm with Figaro.

[Alexandra] Yes?

Uh, he's, um... he's agreed to meet,

so I'll come and grab you.

I mean, FYI, he's, uh... - Okay.

...he's a mite skeptical, so expect a few curly ones.

Um... okay.

See you soon.

She wasn't expecting that, but I'll go get her.

[Nick] How're you feeling?

[Alexandra] Good.

So Figaro, I think he finds it a little, little weird.

He said, "Do you trust her, do you trust her?"

- Mm-hmm. - Uh...

well, he question he has is,

are you naive, or are you part of the game?

[laughing] Right. Stupid or complicit?

Yeah, okay.

[footsteps]

Uh, Figaro,

Alexandra.

Hello. Alexandra Wrage.

Very nice to meet you.

So I have a lot of questions for you,

but I think you have some questions for me first.

[Figaro] I watched how Unaoil used TRACE,

and I just have to wonder what you were thinking.

Either you're completely naive,

or you're in on this whole game.

We had looked at Unaoil for, I think,

ten years in a row, for due diligence.

Every year, we looked at it and said,

"I can't deny them certification

because I have a creepy feeling about this," right?

We do an executive summary that shows all the red flags,

and Unaoil had the maximum number.

It was five, right?

They're in a tax haven, et cetera, et cetera,

So I never felt good about them,

but we didn't have a smoking gun.

I mean, TRACE was used to wash Unaoil.

Yeah.

[Figaro] You were duped.

Not only by your client,

you were duped by all their accomplices.

Absolutely. Their enablers, yep.

[Figaro] I understood

it was important to have references

from blue-chip companies,

but the evidence today shows

that actually, the whole bribery process

starts there.

Everybody is getting comfort from something else,

and I know that we took comfort

from the fact that PwC was their auditors.

[Figaro] They carefully chose an auditor

who was willing to look the other way,

and they took it one step further.

They made the crooked auditor from PwC

their Chief Financial Officer.

Hang on. The auditor from Price Waterhouse Coopers

became the CFO of Unaoil?

Went in-house at Unaoil?

You didn't know that?

Did not know that.

[Figaro] Yeah. Who better to help you cook the books?

The person who was monitoring the books in the first place.

He doesn't mind being on the other side.

He has nothing more to lose now,

because he was on the outside.

He might as well be on the inside.

You've got to give it to them, they were good at being corrupt.

Unaoil, geez! - They were.

They were very good at this.

If they had put the same energy into clean business

that they put into fraudulent compliance,

they might have had a good, good arrangement.

[Figaro] Look, bribery was the business model,

but in 2003, it really opened up for them.

[Nick] You mean with the invasion of Iraq?

[Figaro] Yes. Iraq became the Wild, Wild West.

There was no law, no structure.

Everything was possible.

That was like the key to the kingdom.

[Figaro] No question about it.

We went to Iraq,

and the levels of corruption there

were just horrifying.

It would have been the perfect playground

for a corrupt organisation...

- Gold mine. Gold mine. - ...like Unaoil.

Pallets of cash. That's, you know...

it's a cliché for a reason.

So when you understand

that Iraq was this land of opportunity for Unaoil,

come have a look

at how much work they had on the cards

with some of the biggest companies in the world.

Rolls-Royce, aiming for a $50-million job with Unaoil.

FMC, $60-million job,

Stone & Webster, two $50-million jobs.

Weatherford, huge oil services company,

SBM, massive European company.

We know the biggest contracts they're pushing for

were worth north of a billion dollars, in the end,

so, massive bucks, big stakes, big pressure,

and Unaoil there to deliver.

[Alexandra] So, how did they do that?

To understand how Unaoil does its business in Iraq,

one man is really important,

the Doctor,

and who was the Doctor?

He was our fixer, Ahmed al-Jibouri.

So, the money bounces from Ahmed al-Jibouri

to these Iraqi senior oil officials,

including someone they were calling the Teacher,

one of the top officials in the country.

The idea was there was money flowing

from the multinational clients of Unaoil

through their fixers, like the Doctor,

to people like the Teacher,

to unlock the contracts in Iraq's oil fields.

[Alexandra] I wanted to find the Doctor,

and I wanted to understand

his connection to the Teacher...

so I asked for help from a local journalist,

Nader Salman.

The al-Jibouri family, this is a big family in Iraq.

They are a very wealthy family from Saddam times,

so this is, I think,

what help him to do his business.

What is the impression, the overall impression,

that you have of him and his business style?

Uh, I believe his loyalty, to the money.

To the money? His loyalty is to the money?

Yeah, actually, yeah.

Yeah, that's the case with a lot of middlemen.

Do you think he'd speak with us?

If you are searching for Ahmed al-Jibouri,

Ahmed al-Jibouri will call you back.

If if he wants to be found, he'll call you back.

Yeah, okay.

[phone call ringing]

[ringing]

Hello. Is that Mr. al-Jibouri?

Hi. My name is Alexandra Wrage.

I'm calling you because we're working on a film,

and I was hoping to talk to you about it.

It's the, um, the story of Unaoil,

and I know there's always two sides to every story,

and I was wondering if you'd be willing

to chat with me about it a little bit.

You're not interested?

I'm very keen to make sure

that we get the whole, full story told,

and not be too one-sided.

It's a really good opportunity

for you to say what you want to say.

Um, I guess, I guess I don't really understand

what you mean by "not interested."

The, the story...

[call ends]

I tried to be very fair.

- He's angry. - He was angry?

100%. You make him nervous.

Does it surprise you,

um, would it be unusual, in your mind,

that if somebody is implicated in a story like this,

nobody ever investigates?

Can I keep silent?

[laughing]

You can, if you prefer.

Please.

- Okay. - Yeah.

Uh, just for this question, because this is... [chuckles]

No, it's, it's, I understand. It's a difficult question.

One of the most corrosive things about bribery, about corruption,

is that it almost always

involves the most powerful people.

I agree with you, 100%, yeah, this is the image here,

not just in Iraq, everywhere.

[Nick] So I was still left with the big question,

who was the Doctor sending all of this money to?

Who was the corrupt official?

I knew it was one of these guys at the ribbon-cutting,

but which one of them was the Teacher?

I can take you over this email.

The Teacher was one of

the biggest mysteries in this scandal.

This email, or group of emails, was absolutely critical.

They talk about the Teacher,

this very senior official, very powerful official,

going to a certain site in Iraq on a certain day,

so we matched the Teacher's travel plan

with the Iraqi press,

and then, boom, the lightbulb goes off.

Hussain al-Shahristani is the Teacher.

[interviewer] ...his excellency,

Dr. Hussain al-Shahristani.

[reporter] Shahristani

was one of Iraq's top nuclear scientists,

hand-picked by Saddam Hussein to begin work on an atomic bomb.

His refusal landed him in prison.

[reporter] Shahristani spent nearly 4,000 days

in solitary confinement under Saddam,

one of the most respected exiles to return after the war.

[Nick] The former Oil Minister,

the Deputy Prime Minister,

I mean, this guy was supposed to be the hero of Iraq,

the pillar of transparency with his glass box of oil bids,

and it looked like he was on the take.

He's the man that Unaoil believes

that it has to influence to win the huge contracts,

and Unaoil believes

that by paying him millions and millions of dollars,

they can exert influence among the oil ministers,

so heaps of money gets funnelled through Al-Jibouri.

What a waste of an opportunity to clean up the country.

Iraq was massively corrupt during Saddam Hussein,

and the great promise was,

topple Saddam, free the country up,

corruption... don't rid it completely, but,

It was so hopeful, and it's all just fallen apart.

It actually makes you furious.

Mm.

[Alexandra] Iraq has an Integrity Commission

that's supposed to look into this kind of case,

and they did open up a file on Unaoil.

[Alexandra] Despite the fact that this case

got lots of media attention in Iraq,

the commission's investigation has gone nowhere.

[speaking in English]

What is the key problem to bringing justice?

The emails from the Unaoil case,

they actually named your minister of oil.

Winning contracts through bribes,

how common is that in Iraq?

It's not measured?

[Nick] In addition

to the Iraqi Integrity Commission's

investigation into Unaoil,

the Australian Federal Police had their own case,

and law enforcement agencies across Europe,

in Italy, Monaco, Portugal,

Switzerland, France,

Guernsey, and the Netherlands,

assisted with the wider global investigations,

as did authorities in Canada.

In the U.S., the Department of Justice

headed up an American investigation,

along with the IRS, the SEC,

and even the Postal Inspection Service.

But it was the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office

that took the lead working with all these agencies,

all in pursuit of justice against the Ahsanis.

They realised, basically, the game was up.

This was gonna end in a trial, and they didn't fancy it.

And at that point,

it appears that Ata Ahsani had fled to Iran,

and Cyrus had gone to Beirut.

Saman was essentially trapped in Monaco

and couldn't leave,

and we were waiting for him to turn up

in a third-party country,

where a Red Notice would be executed,

and that's what happened when he went to Italy.

He goes to the airport in Rome,

and he tries to board a flight to Buenos Aires.

He probably thought, "You know what,

that's a country that's difficult to extradite from,

all my money's offshore,

and I can go live in Tierra Del Fuego

and fish, or whatever,

and that's my lot. I'm done."

[Nick] It's just a bizarre story,

what happened in Italy,

and it's where the whole case really begins to fall apart.

So, Marco, you're a journalist in Italy,

where this Unaoil story has made headlines.

Take me through what happened with Saman Ahsani

at this Rome airport.

So he went through this path, he entered the airport.

He went through security check.

[beeping]

He handed his passport.

The police officer checks against a computer.

There's a red alert.

There was an European arrest warrant

issued by the British authorities.

I had a flash on my computer.

So, "What's this?"

Basically, that passport number

would've shown "this person needs to be detained,"

and he was.

Finally, we got hold of him?

Saman had been arrested.

I was cock-a-hoop. I was...

I was genuinely absolutely ecstatic.

And here it is, in its beauty.

This is Regina Coeli, this is the prison.

The yellow, the cream building?

[Marco] The cream building. Yeah.

This is where Saman Ahsani came.

Former monastery, prison for 200 years.

[Nick] Yeah, it's, uh, it's foreboding, isn't it?

I think maybe 'cause it's so ancient.

You can feel the pain inside.

[Marco] Yeah. Nuns, and then inmates.

Definitely a place of, uh, imprisonment,

in all sorts of ways.

[Nick] Would not want to be spending a night here.

Finally got hold of him,

and we thought we were on Easy Street,

and then we weren't.

[Nick] We go to meet the cops who arrest him.

[Marco] This is a special branch of the police,

and here is the police officer that actually signed his arrest.

- Buongiorno, Commissioner. - Buongiorno.

This is the folder of Saman Ahsani,

with all the papers,

so the papers that the criminal police

has issued that night,

together with the INTERPOL papers

that they received from Britain.

And, Commissioner,

what are the actual crimes named in the arrest warrant?

So the arrest warrant names "corruption"

- Yeah. -Yeah. - ...as the crime.

[Nick] But then we discovered something strange.

Our cameras caught a shot of the arrest document,

which showed Saman made a prison call

to a mysterious person named Steph Davis.

So when he was arrested,

Saman Ahsani got one phone call.

Who do you call? Your wife?

Lawyer.

Your lawyer, yeah.

But who's Steph Davis? Is it a secret girlfriend?

Do some Googling.

"Steph Davis, FBI."

Hang on a second. He makes his one call to the FBI

when he's arrested fleeing U.K. justice?

What's going on?

My superior comes over and says, "Mm, there's a problem."

And I get told that the DOJ and the FBI,

they want us to withdraw our warrants

so that he can travel to the U.S.

And it was just like, "What is going on?"

[Nick] The Brits were absolutely apoplectic.

The case they spent 12 million pounds on

just got stolen from them in Rome.

The FBI went behind the back of the U.K. authorities,

cut a deal with the Ahsanis

so the Ahsanis would begin to cooperate

with U.S. law enforcement,

and freeze the U.K. investigation out.

Yeah, and those two countries

are supposed to be cooperating, obviously,

in their fight against corruption,

but it's interesting

that the Ahsanis thought they would be better off

in the United States than the U.K.

He thought he could avoid a U.K. jail cell

if he did the deal with the FBI.

You know, if you're Saman Ahsani,

"Yeah, I'll become an FBI rat, an FBI snitch.

I'll snitch against the big companies.

They'll be fined, and I'll stay out of jail."

I'm just gonna give my editor in Melbourne an update.

- G'day, mate. - G'day.

Listen, I'll just fill you in quickly, Bach.

So I've got to Rome, 'cause this is the place

where Saman Ahsani, uh, basically gamed the system.

Went for a run this morning on the Tiber River,

and I'll tell you, I was just filled with anger,

because it's like,

how the F did this guy, this so-called global crook,

manage to spend one night in a Rome jail cell

before ducking to America,

where he's probably gonna walk out a free man?

Yes. Yep.

So he knew he could secretly meet with the Americans

behind the back of the Italians, behind the back of the British,

who wanted to arrest him

and throw him in a jail cell in London,

and cook up a deal with the Americans

to get out of Italy to America,

in a way that would ensure

the only night he ever spent in a jail cell

was that one night in a jail cell here in Rome.

[Bachelard laughing]

I mean, it's-it's classic, isn't it? How did...

That's their business model, and it continues to work.

Yeah. Anyhow, it makes me...

Smarm and money. Smarm and money.

Exactly. Exactly.

The Monaco millionaire can still basically

get out of any problem he finds himself in.

Yeah. Which sucks.

Yep.

This is a titanic scheme that had been perpetrated,

and the tendrils that went into that,

and went out to other places,

they wanted control of that.

We're talking about 36 multinational companies

who paid bribes to Unaoil,

all at multimillion-dollar levels

across most of the world,

which implicated very, very senior businessmen,

owners of companies, government officials.

I think when there were dollars on the counter,

you could see the DOJ thinking, "Right, we want that!"

And that's the nature of the beast.

Uh, the U.S. DOJ is going after these corruption cases,

and the U.K. SFO is going after these cases.

How do their styles differ?

In the States, you know, flipping informants,

getting people to turn against their fellow criminals,

that's pretty standard.

Whether or not people are all telling the truth,

and whether or not they've verified it's the truth,

ha! is up for debate.

But it's really down to this,

they're willing to flip people, listen to what they're told,

use that information to flip other people,

and go up the chain.

So, you've got the Ahsani gang,

Ata, Cyrus, and Saman,

and they're like the meat in the hamburger.

The U.S. on one side, they're helping the U.S.,

and the U.S. is going after big companies.

The U.S. wants to fine these companies

into kingdom come.

The problem is, on the other side of the burger,

you got the U.K. crunching them.

England's Serious Fraud Office could still bring charges.

They want to throw the Ahsani gang into jail

for 10 years plus.

That's a problem for the Ahsanis. What do they do?

They launch a full-court press.

How do you blow up the U.K. investigation?

Tom Martin. He is the thorn in their side.

They can destroy him...

they destroy the U.K. investigation.

They didn't wanna be prosecuted by me.

If I were them, I wouldn't want to be prosecuted by me either.

Absolutely. I totally agree with that.

I take it as a badge of honour

that they didn't want to be in a court with me.

Yeah. Agreed.

The Ahsanis complain to the U.S. authorities

about Tom Martin.

The U.S. then complain

to the SFO, the Serious Fraud Office,

about an incident that happened in a pub

two years before,

between Martin and this man,

the FBI liaison to the U.K.,

Special Agent Kevin Luebke.

Luebke had accessed SFO databases without permission.

Kevin Luebke was in the U.K. to liberate information

and get that information back to the FBI.

Luebke and I had gone

to a pub around the corner from the U.S. Embassy.

We had a little exchange

over him, uh, pilfering information from the SFO intel.

It's alleged that I called him a "quisling,"

a "spy," and a "cunt."

Now... I called him a quisling.

That's agreed.

I did not call him those other things.

The U.S. then accused Tom Martin of swearing at an FBI agent.

That complaint, those swear words,

lead to Tom Martin being suspended.

So name-calling between two law enforcement guys

is enough to bump him off the case?

The swearing was a proxy.

It was about getting rid of the Brits altogether.

The crooks, with the help of the U.S.,

got one up on Tom Martin.

And next thing, I'm at home, playing with my train set.

I... you know.

In some ways, it's an absolute masterstroke, isn't it?

You know, you've got this fire-breathing prosecutor

who's on the charge, trying to put you inside,

and you've managed to get him out of the way,

you've managed to get to the States,

where you're gonna get a lighter sentence,

and they're not gonna come after your money,

and you can go home in, what, six months or whatever it is?

I mean... well played.

But doesn't that infuriate you?

I, to be honest with you,

I take less issue about what the Ahsanis have done.

They're criminals, you know, you've got to expect

they're gonna do some pretty revolting things

in order to get to their ill-gotten gains

and ride off into the sunset.

That's their role here.

My role was to catch them.

I think where I do have a legitimate gripe

is that I should've expected more

from my brother prosecutors,

that when they being invited

to do something pretty bewildering,

to make a complaint on behalf of a defendant

against his prosecutor,

I think that that... that was a low move.

[Nick] So Tom Martin is gone.

The U.K. case is effectively dead.

Saman Ahsani has gotten himself to America

and cooked up this deal.

His brother joins him,

and the DOJ give their father, Ata,

immunity from prosecution in exchange for a fine,

and the Serious Fraud Office

has lost one of the biggest bribery cases in U.K. history.

I've worked in the anti-corruption world

almost my whole career,

and I don't think I've ever seen a case

fall apart as dramatically as this did.

[Nick] Well, it turns out there was another player involved,

this guy here. His name's David Tinsley,

and he was pulling the strings behind the scenes.

There's no photo of him.

He's ex-DEA, Drug Enforcement Administration.

Spent 25 years going after Colombian drug lords.

Starts this private firm to help out people in trouble.

Tinsley uses his connections

to start to mix in with the Ahsanis and the Ahsani case.

It's essentially a behind-the-scenes deal

he's trying to strike on behalf of the Ahsanis.

What is his role?

How does he have all this access?

Well, as these emails we've dug up show,

Tinsley had these old buddies at the DOJ,

and he was corresponding with them,

urging them to give the Ahsanis a good deal,

and he's also secretly behind the push

to get rid of Tom Martin.

The FBI and the DOJ were talking to Tinsley,

and every week,

they were getting on a call with us,

not telling us what they were doing,

and asking us for information

about how our cases were going, what were we doing.

I think it's pretty duplicitous.

[Nick] But the Ahsanis still have a problem.

Even without Tom Martin,

the SFO could still bring charges against them,

if they wanted to.

So they hatched another plan,

sic the government on some easy prey,

their own employees at Unaoil.

[Tom] Ziad was a former schoolboy chum of the Ahsanis.

He'd been a country manager,

which was in their sort of job spec,

that he was in charge of paying bribes.

He was very much sort of middle management.

There was another manager, Stephen Whiteley,

and a chap called Paul Bond, who worked for SBM,

who also got caught up in the bribery scheme

in relation to the pipeline.

One of their chief lieutenants,

a chap called Basil al-Jarah, code name the Captain,

he was a very effective payer of bribes.

Let's call him a capo.

In sort of American mafioso speak,

he's a capo.

[Nick] These were the four unlucky ones,

the sacrificial lambs, if you will.

Tinsley has these guys in his sights.

He'd gone to the ears of the Serious Fraud Office

and he said, "Hey, there's some easy pinches here.

We can land A, B, C, D in jail,"

convincing the SFO to go after the foot soldiers,

the Ahsanis' lieutenants,

rather than the Ahsanis themselves.

[Tom] Shortly after Saman Ahsani

had got himself to the United States,

a new director of the Serious Fraud Office

had been appointed, a U.S. lawyer.

Lisa Osofsky is an American British citizen,

a former lawyer of the DOJ.

She was not someone who was well-known

within the white-collar criminal community,

uh, in London.

[Nick] Over the course of a couple of months,

Tinsley starts emailing and texting with Lisa Osofsky,

and they have these revealing exchanges.

Osofsky's texting the Ahsanis' fixer

that she's "super honoured that you're coming my way,"

and later, "I'm looking forward

to all we can accomplish together."

Tinsley responds, "We're moving to a good solution,"

and then, "You're the bomb."

Osofsky, "We work well together, and will continue to do so."

Tinsley, then, texts to say

that she was his "new most favourite person."

This guy Tinsley was able to go to the Serious Fraud Office

and walk the halls as if the agency was his own.

With the SFO Director on his side,

the Ahsanis' lawyer and Tinsley

have this extraordinary dinner with Ziad Akle,

one of the four Unaoil employees facing charges in the U.K.,

trying to convince him to take a plea.

The former employee records the conversation,

[recording playing]

That's not how most law enforcement agencies in Europe,

and I would say pretty much around the world,

that's not how they operate.

Tinsley was essentially selling these guys a line

that he'd get them minimal jail time

if they cut a deal.

We couldn't do deals.

We were not legally able to do that.

It was a clear conflict of interest.

How they ever arrived in that situation

is, is, frankly terrifying,

and, of course, it didn't help the four guys in custody.

[reporter] A former senior executive

of Monaco-based Unaoil

was sentenced to jail over a bribery plot.

[reporter] Paul Bond has been sentenced

to three and a half years imprisonment.

[news anchor] ...and two former Unaoil group managers,

Ziad Akle and Stephen Whiteley,

were convicted.

This is the first win for the SFO in quite some time.

The Ahsanis have ultimately engineered

one of the greatest plays in global corporate corruption

the world has ever seen.

Get in first, do a deal with the FBI,

do a deal with the SFO.

If it means throwing your childhood friend in jail,

so be it,

as long as the Ahsanis stay out of jail,

as long as the Ahsanis keep their money.

They were used as pawns by the Ahsanis,

and it seems like at least some of the authorities

were willing to take this low-hanging fruit

and give the Ahsanis what they wanted,

the golden ticket to stay free.

[Wrage] The DOJ wouldn't speak with us,

but seemed to get what they wanted.

With the Ahsanis' testimony,

they built cases against Unaoil client companies,

and those cases got settled with fines.

TechnipFMC paid close to $300 million,

while the engineering firm Amec Foster Wheeler

paid $18 million,

SBM Offshore, nearly $250 million,

Honeywell, more than $200 million,

and Rolls-Royce, $170 million

to the U.S. government to settle its case.

Whether or not the DOJ was effective

really depends on

what you think will deter future corruption.

If you send the message

that the misconduct can all be resolved with money,

you're not gonna deter corruption,

because corruption is really, really profitable.

But then we get this unbelievable news

out of the U.K.

[news anchor] Next up,

bad news for the Serious Fraud Office

of the United Kingdom.

[reporter] A trio of men linked to Unaoil

saw their convictions quashed following SFO failures.

The only employees in the U.K.

who are actually convicted of bribery

had their cases thrown out on a technicality.

The SFO didn't disclose

that they had been having secret conversations

with the Ahsanis' fixer, David Tinsley,

and this led to a legal and political firestorm

in the U.K.,

and ultimately, to hearings in front of Parliament.

Order. Order.

Welcome to this evidence session

on the work of the Serious Fraud Office.

Welcome, uh, Miss Osofsky,

and can I ask you to introduce yourself?

Thank you,

and thank you for pronouncing the surname perfectly,

Lisa Osofsky, the Director of the Serious Fraud Office.

Uh, Ms. Osofsky, last week,

we saw Paul Bond join Ziad Akle

in having their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal

in the Unaoil case.

Those are very disappointing judgments for us

in those cases.

As head of the office,

I take responsibility

for everything that happens in the office.

Why was it, in relation to Unaoil,

that, uh, the SFO didn't proceed against the Ahsani family?

They were moved from Italy to the U.S.,

and they were cooperating with U.S. authorities.

They were...

admitting to the full extent of their crime.

I made a judgment call

that we were not gonna get them back.

They were already in the U.S.

[Farris] The kind of blunder is so basic.

Isn't it alarming for members of the public to hear

that this could ever have happened in the first place?

And the case collapsed as a consequence.

I mean, it's been highly damaging,

the David Tinsley relationship.

It was a damaging relationship.

I appreciate, and apologise,

for the fact that we had that meeting.

But were you had over by David Tinsley, to use a--

- I'm sorry? - Were you had over

by David Tinsley, do you think, now?

I think... in some way, we were.

- Okay. - We were.

[Tom] I mean, Osofsky's admitted

she's been had over by Tinsley now

before the Justice Committee.

Absolutely, with knobs on,

but ultimately, justice has not been served here.

The evidence against these people was overwhelming.

If Osofsky had sat on her hands and done nothing,

these guys would've been convicted.

If she'd had nothing to do with Tinsley,

they'd have all been convicted,

but the people of Iraq here have lost as well, haven't they?

You know, they've been subject to kleptocratic behaviour

through the actions of the Ahsanis and Unaoil,

and these guys who were convicted.

They're gonna get nothing out of this now, are they?

There's no justice for them.

[♪]

[Nick] The depressing thing about this journey for me

is the system that I thought was set up

to fight, expose corruption

doesn't actually expose or stop corruption,

and some of it actually aids companies like Unaoil.

It's like it's a big joke that's being played on the whole world,

and we're powerless to stop it.

You know, Unaoil was a bit of a turning point.

It was a turning point, because...

this level of due diligence for that level of sophistication

was the wrong fit.

Uh...

have you lost your trust in corporates?

I'm not sure

how high my trust in corporations has ever been.

There's more corruption than I realised,

and I always knew there was a lot of corruption.

There's more sophistication around corruption,

and that's distressing,

because people are getting better at it.

The system is-is broken, and a lot of this doesn't work.

What we thought was corralling these companies

and helping us all get a little closer to the truth

is easily manipulated.

If the Ahsanis go down, then that's something,

but of course, if they do go down,

who's gonna fill their boots?

There'll be another set...

in fact, there's another Ahsani family right now.

We just don't know about it.

There is absolutely another Ahsani family right now,

but I think we've made it... we, you, this case,

have made it harder for the next Ahsani family,

because if you aspire to be an Ahsani...

gruesome thought,

but if you aspire to be an Ahsani,

and you watch what they've been through

over the last couple of years,

it's a little less glamorous than it used to be.

And there's still the sentencing hearing,

so I'm curious to hear what you think.

What is your prediction?

I think they're gonna walk,

and I think, when they walk,

they're gonna look at you in the court,

and just go, "Pfft!"

I mean, seriously.

That's the Ahsanis.

[Alexandra] It felt so strange.

I'd been following this case for years,

and now, finally, I was gonna see one of them, in person,

possibly face some consequences.

[photos snapping]

Saman walked into the courtroom.

He frankly looked a little scared.

The Assistant Attorney General stood up

and outlined the extent of Unaoil's corruption schemes,

and how Saman had personally paid bribes

and destroyed evidence.

Then it was Saman's turn.

He admitted he engaged in bribery,

he expressed regret,

he listened to the sentence from the judge...

...and that was it.

Saman walked out of court,

jumped into a black SUV,

and he and his entourage drove off.

[Nick] Hey, Alexandra.

Hi, Nick!

Can you hear me? - Tell me...

I'm dying to know what happened.

He was very quiet.

He looked pretty subdued the whole time.

He came in, he looked over at me.

I don't... I don't know if he knows who I am.

I think he does.

Uh, but we made eye contact,

and I held it for three or four seconds

before he looked away.

So, they went back and forth,

but the end result is 12 months plus a day.

12 months jail?

Yep,

and then there's a 1.5 million monetary penalty as well,

but, um...

he got off pretty easily.

I think, deep down, I was expecting,

maybe because I'm so cynical

about how everyone's walked away, no jail.

A year in jail is a year in jail still.

How do you think this sentence

compares to other corporate crimes?

12 months, given the egregious conduct

and the period of time

and the extraordinary sums involved,

this is low.

A slap on the wrist?

Slap on the wrist.

[Alexandra] We tried to chase down

some of the officials who accepted the bribes.

None of them were ever charged,

and none would speak with us...

except for one,

the Teacher,

the biggest of the alleged bribe-takers himself,

former Deputy Prime Minister for Energy,

Hussain al-Shahristani.

Thank you so much for meeting with us.

You are the only person implicated in Unaoil's bribery

who's been willing to speak with me.

Let me ask you kind of the most difficult question.

Did you, while you were in government positions,

accept bribes?

No. Never.

- You never accepted a bribe? - Never.

From Unaoil people...

- From anybody. - ...or anybody else?

I have not been aware of anybody under my supervision

who have accepted a bribe and I failed to punish him.

At what point in your career did you first hear about Unaoil?

As an oil minister, I've never heard of the company.

An Australian young journalist, Nick McKenzie, have called me,

and he said that there is a report coming out,

and my name is mentioned.

I just want to make sure that I'm clear.

The first time you became aware of the company Unaoil

was because of the newspaper article?

Yes.

And as soon as this came out,

I asked the Prime Minister to investigate the case.

I call upon the Inspector General of the Ministry

to investigate.

That's my signature.

It's really difficult to untangle.

Let me take you through

one of the most surprising emails.

It's actually a pair of emails.

We have these code names.

Unaoil has this middleman that they called The Doctor,

al-Jibouri,

who claims to have an inside track

to a powerful politician that they call The Teacher.

In one email,

they refer to the Prime Minister asking Teacher

to go to the Leighton oil facility,

and in another email,

they specifically say

that the Deputy Prime Minister Shahristani, you,

have been asked to go to that facility.

So, first email,

Shahristani has been asked...

- Yeah. - ...you've been asked.

Second email, they go back to the code name.

You, I think, did, in fact,

go to the barge. - Absolutely.

- There was a Reuters article. - Yes, yes.

- There were some photographs. - I did, yeah.

Would you agree that they are referring to you as Teacher?

Yes, it seems from this email

that he says "Shahristani" at some point, and "Teacher."

What do you know about al-Jibouri, the Doctor?

Uh, I never heard of him,

known him, had any contact with him,

or knowledge of his contacts

with officials at the Ministry of Oil.

You've never met him?

No, never.

So if we start from the assumption

that, for whatever reason,

they are referring to you as Teacher,

then it seems to me there are two possibilities.

One possibility is

they have this corrupt deal with you,

and they're trying to protect themselves and you

by referring to you as a code name,

and the other is

they are trying to intimate that they have

this relationship with you that they don't have.

Assuming that these emails are genuine and correct,

my, uh, understanding would be

that these people have tried to,

um, in Arabic, we call it "milk."

You know "milk"? - Yep. Yeah.

To get large sums for themselves

making some kind of false documents

that they have passed the money through to somebody else.

So if I understand you correctly,

al-Jibouri just doubled the number

and kept it all?

Why are they lying about your involvement?

To make money for themselves.

Money and power corrupt, for sure,

anywhere in the world, in any culture.

But they only corrupt, in my belief,

those who are susceptible to corruption.

Power and money doesn't make a person corrupt.

It makes a person reveal his inner corruption...

- I agree. - ...that he has been

hiding for too long.

[Nick] I'm about to reunite with Le Figaro.

We set out together on this course of justice.

I want to catch up with him

to see what he thinks of how this whole case has unfolded.

- How are you? - Hi, Nick.

[both laughing]

- Long time, no see. - Yeah, good to see you again.

So pleased to see you.

Uh, should we, um... - Yeah.

...walk through?

We shared a journey, me and you,

so it's, it's lovely to be catching up.

At the very start, I remember asking you,

"what do you want to achieve?" and you said,

"I want the big guys held to account,"

the companies and the, you know, the Ahsanis.

[Figaro] That hasn't happened.

[Nick] The middle, not the boss.

[Figaro] Not the big guys. They all escaped.

So, do you regret coming forward to me,

or do you think it was... - No, I don't.

...worth doing?

[Figaro] I don't regret it, because it's the truth.

You were the first corruption whistleblower,

then Lindsey Mitchell says, "I paid a bribe.

I did this. I did that." It was amazing.

[Figaro] What's remarkable about this for me,

because when I started to launch this battle,

I was expecting not much reaction,

and when it happened, I thought, wow, yeah,

maybe something, maybe it's the beginning of something.

I mean, justice has not been served.

The Americans backdoored the Brits.

We know that now.

- Yeah, I know. Yeah. - I mean, that's...

[Figaro] It's disappointing, to be honest, yeah.

Yeah, it's... it's actually extraordinary.

Yeah, if the Brits had carriage of it,

if Tom Martin had his way,

Saman and Cyrus and Ata would be in jail,

sitting in a jail in London right now.

[Figaro] Yeah.

[Nick] And now they're going to go to America and...

- It's insane. - It's insane.

[Figaro] What's for sure

is that every regulation that is put in place

has a few... cracks,

and some of these cracks are there by mistake.

You don't know what the crooks

are going to do with those mistakes,

what they're going to imagine they can do with them,

but some of these cracks are obviously left...

left to leave a door open to continue doing things,

and that disturbs the whole thing.

It means, really, something... something wrong in the system.

[Nick] To some extent, I think,

you're gonna be looking over your shoulder

for the rest of your life.

I mean, I don't want to freak you out, but...

- Yeah. - It's, uh...

it's the reality of being a whistleblower,

especially when you fight the rich and powerful.

Yeah.

It may not be the Ahsanis, but...

[Figaro] No, I mean, there's so many people involved in this.

Is it an oil minister?

Is it an executive you've disgraced?

Your conduct has disgraced and wrecked lots of lives.

These people deserve it, but they'll be angry,

and that's gonna be something that follows you forever.

[Figaro] Yeah.

[♪]