Individual Post Archive
« Wilson gave secret advice to Greek king |
Main
| Focus: Speak up Kofi: What's that about spies? »
By Dominic Kennedy
A BRITISH businessman accused of helping Colonel Gaddafi’s secret nuclear programme had previously been investigated by British authorities for exporting potential atomic bomb equipment to Pakistan.
Peter Griffin, a 68-year-old grandfather, is accused in a report sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency by Malaysian police of helping Colonel Gaddafi to design an uranium enrichment workshop that could be used for nuclear weapons or nuclear power, as well as training technicians and acquiring components. He denies any wrongdoing.
Mr Griffin, an engineer from Swansea, lives in a £500,000 villa on the French Riviera protected by electronic gates, video cameras, high walls and woodland.
The Times can disclose that he has been known to the British authorities since the late 1970s, when he was investigated as part of a network helping Pakistan’s clandestine efforts to become the Muslim world’s first nuclear power.
According to officials in Islamabad at the time, the secret project was part-funded by Colonel Gaddafi, who sent millions of dollars to Pakistan on condition that he was given access to the country’s atomic weapons capability.
However, there is no evidence that Mr Griffin received any money from Colonel Gaddafi.
Mr Griffin’s name emerged again last month when President Bush denounced a black market in nuclear technology created by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue scientist known as the father of Pakistan’s atom bomb.
Last autumn a ship carrying specialised nuclear centrifuge parts to Libya was intercepted by America after being sent from Malaysia via Dubai.
The Malaysian manufacturer said that the components were made for a Dubai-based company called Gulf Technical Industries, which is owned by Peter Griffin and his 40-year-old son, Paul.
An alleged middleman, Bukhary Syed Abu Tahir, has claimed that the Malaysian company engineered more than 25,000 parts for Gulf Technical Industries, according to the police report.
Mr Griffin was alleged to be working on behalf of the disraced Dr Khan, who was providing sensitive equipment to Libya. Whatever equipment Dr Khan could not get directly to Colonel Gaddafi, the Pakistani scientist helped the dictator to build.
According to the Malaysian police report, Mr Griffin designed a workshop to make centrifuges and arranged for eight Libyan technicians to travel to Spain for training in the use of specialist lathes.
Colonel Gaddafi was acknowledged to be close to developing a nuclear bomb when he agreed publicly in December to drop his weapons of mass destruction programme.
By coincidence, British authorities had seized a computer from Mr Griffin’s home in France last June. It was an episode that brought back memories of how an invoice for equipment capable of building an atom bomb was traced from Pakistan back to a company part-owned by Mr Griffin in August 1978.
British authorities, eager to prevent nuclear proliferation, became concerned by the sale of 30 Swindon-made “inverters” capable of driving ultra-centrifuges in an uranium enrichment plant. The invoice led to Weargate, a company owned by Peter Griffin and Abdus Salam, a British citizen of Pakistani origin.
Tony Benn, then Energy Minister, ordered an investigation which concluded that the shipment was legal. However, Britain tightened up export rules three times in 1978 and 1979 to try to stop Pakistan acquiring the technology.
Simon Henderson, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The Times last week: “The British Government tried to keep one step ahead by constantly changing export control regulations.” Mr Henderson confronted Mr Griffin at his home in Swansea at the time. “He invited me inside, though hardly welcoming me, and cautiously told me what business he was doing in Pakistan. ‘I am not helping Pakistan make a nuclear bomb, but why shouldn’t Pakistan have a nuclear bomb anyway?’ was, I recall, his line of argument. He told me that he had sold £800,000 worth of equipment.”
Mr Griffin’s partner in Weargate, Mr Salam, later emerged in Dubai, importing inverter components from Canada for Pakistan. After a quarter-century of secretive developments, Pakistan’s first nuclear bomb tests stunned the world in 1998.
At her home in South Wales, Mr Griffin’s former wife, Sheila, maintained that her son Paul had nothing to do with sending equipment to Libya. “I can assure you everything is now resolved and all hell has been let loose. It’s somebody who used his name. Honestly, I’m not telling lies,” she said. She also denied that the family had been involved with Pakistan’s weapons programme. “We didn’t have anything to do with nuclear bombs.”
Peter Griffin remarried in Swansea in 1992 and now lives in the secluded villa on a private road outside the village of Figanières, near Fréjus.
He publicly denounced America’s wars against Saddam Hussein in a letter to a Gulf newspaper last year. “America sent all its bills for billions of dollars to Kuwait for every missile, bomb, toilet roll, etc, used during the (1991) Gulf War,” he wrote.
“America made money from that conflict but there is nobody to pick up the bills for the next one except the American (and British) taxpayer.”
Speaking from his villa, Mr Griffin said that the Malaysian police report had been misinterpreted by all the world’s media, with the exception of the Evening Post in Swansea. “They know me,” he said. “They know that I wouldn’t do anything.”
He threatened to launch defamation actions for “lies, damned lies and statistics” and said he hoped to issue a statement in the coming week.
“I’ve got both feet on the ground,” he said. “I’m not answering questions with the press. I hope one day to be able to give interviews and sell my memoirs and make some money on this.”
There is no suggestion that Mr Griffin or his son were breaking the law. Chris Mills, a solicitor with Clyde & Co, of Dubai, said that Paul Griffin was “obviously quite distressed” since he had “no knowledge at all” of any Libya-bound shipment.
“What Paul thinks is that someone has been using his company name in order to transship goods through Dubai,” Mr Mills said.
When the goods arrived, Gulf Technical Industries had not been contacted. Instead, a so-far unidentified person had paid the freight charges to clear the items through Dubai and out again.
Paul Griffin suspected that he and his company had been “set up . . . to take the fall if this all went wrong, as it has done,” Mr Mills said.
Paul Griffin was seeking documents to show that his company had not been involved.
February 29, 2004 at 11:54 PM in Espionage - general | Permalink | TrackBack (4) | Top of page | Blog Home