Nicholas Gilby

Deception in High Places reveals the corruption endemic in Britain's biggest arms deals over the last fifty years. Based on painstaking research in government archives, collections of private and court papers and documents won by the author in a landmark Freedom of Information Tribunal against the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the book illuminates a shadow world of bribery and elite enrichment. Deception in High Places charts British government involvement in arms trade corruption and presents the fullest history yet of bribery in Britain’s arms deals with Saudi Arabia. It includes the backstory of the controversial termination of a Serious Fraud Office corruption investigation following pressure by the Saudi Royal Family and the British establishment.

Deception in High Places reveals the corruption endemic in Britain's biggest arms deals over the last fifty years. Based on painstaking research in government archives, collections of private and court papers and documents won by the author in a landmark Freedom of Information Tribunal against the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the book illuminates a shadow world of bribery and elite enrichment. Deception in High Places charts British government involvement in arms trade corruption and presents the fullest history yet of bribery in Britain’s arms deals with Saudi Arabia. It includes the backstory of the controversial termination of a Serious Fraud Office corruption investigation following pressure by the Saudi Royal Family and the British establishment.

Guns, landmines, bombs and rockets - the arms trade brings death and destruction to millions of people around the world, many of them civilians. Yet most of these weapons are made in countries which are members of the UN Security council. Exposing the cynicism, bribery, insider deals and political backscratching which characterise today's arms trade, Nicolas Gilbey not only looks at the trade in conventional arms but also at the transfer of torture tools to some of the world's worst human rights abusers.