The UK’s criminal probe into Unaoil Group further unraveled, after a London appeals court on 24 March overturned the bribery conviction of an executive who had worked for a client of the oil-services consulting firm.

Paul Bond, a former sales manager for SBM Offshore, a Dutch oil-services company, is the second individual to have his conviction quashed after an appeals court in December found that the UK’s Serious Fraud Office had made serious missteps in its case involving Monaco-based Unaoil.