The senior British diplomat who played a central role in pressuring the Serious Fraud Office to drop its investigation into BAE Systems over the al-Yamamah Saudi arms deal has been hired by the defence group, the Guardian has learned.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, who left the Foreign Office last October, will become BAE's international business development director, focusing on the Middle East and south-east Asia. He starts his new, full-time role next week.
The move is likely to cause uproar among anti-corruption campaigners. It will also raise further questions over the close relationship between the government and BAE, and the circumstances in which the SFO investigation was controversially dropped in 2006.
Cowper-Coles' appointment has been cleared by the prime minister's advisory committee on business appointments, which vets new jobs for former civil servants who have worked for the crown in the past two years. One of the conditions set is that Cowper-Coles must not lobby ministers or civil servants on behalf of BAE for the next two years.
The committee said: "Given that it has been four years since he had any involvement with BAE Systems as HM ambassador to Riyadh, and that the appointment will be four months since his last day of service, the appointment was approved subject to the condition that, for two years from his last day of service, he should not become personally involved in lobbying UK government ministers or crown servants, including special advisers, on behalf of his new employer."
It is understood that William Hague, the foreign secretary, has also cleared the appointment.
A fluent speaker of Arabic, Hebrew and French, Cowper-Coles was ambassador to Saudi Arabia between 2003 and 2006; he had three significant meetings in London in late 2006 with Robert Wardle, then director of the SFO. Cowper-Coles told Wardle that Britain's national security was at risk if the BAE investigation continued, as Saudi princes were threatening to withdraw co-operation in fighting terrorism. Two days after the last meeting, Wardle ended the investigation, attracting condemnation in Britain and abroad. Tony Blair, then prime minister, and Lord Goldsmith, attorney general, both cited national security concerns in supporting the move. Under Britain's anti-corruption laws, the government can intervene in an investigation only on such grounds and not for commercial or diplomatic reasons.
In February 2008, one of Britain's most senior judges accused the government of "holding a gun to the head" of Wardle. BAE had been lobbying the government intensively for some time.
Cowper-Coles has always defended his role, insisting that he would do the same again in similar circumstances.
It is understood that when he left the Foreign Office last year, Cowper-Coles wrote to BAE, Europe's largest defence contractor, to ask about opportunities with the group, and was surprised to be offered a full-time job.
BAE is being hit as the US and UK governments squeeze their defence budgets. The company warned on Thursday that sales from armaments and armoured vehicles – generated mostly in the US – would be lower than it had previously anticipated this year, having fallen 25% year on year. Sales are growing fastest in its international business, covering Australia, India and Saudi Arabia.
BAE said: "Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles has joined BAE Systems as business development director, international. He brings a wealth of international experience and will provide valuable advice and support for business-winning campaigns, particularly in the Middle East. It is, of course, normal business practice for global companies who supply products and services to national governments and the armed forces to employ personnel who can help them understand, meet and exceed their customers' needs."
Brilliant career
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, 56, went on "extended leave" from the Foreign Office last June. The straight-talking veteran diplomat had served as UK ambassador to Afghanistan, and was appointed special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan in February 2009, but fell out with the Foreign Office under William Hague after clashing with senior Nato and US officials.
He had insisted that the military-driven counter-insurgency effort in Afghanistan was heading for failure, and that talks with the Taliban should be prioritised. A month after he formally left the Foreign Office in October, he accused the British army of submitting "misleadingly optimistic" reports on the state of the war.
Cowper-Coles joined the Foreign Office in 1977 with an Oxford double first in classics. He studied Arabic at the "school for spies" at Shemlan in Lebanon, using what his friend and fellow ex-ambassador Chris Wilton calls "a brain the size of a small planet", before being sent to Cairo.Friends say that he was not interested on leaving government after more than 40 years in taking up a "portfolio" career made up of several private sector jobs, and did not want to work for a bank or an oil company.