Allied forces in the Gulf War, respectively. Following his acquaintance with Akram Ojjeh, a fellow Syrian financier and the founder of the TAG Group, Saïd established TAG Systems Constructions SA, a civil engineering and telecommunications business, which he chaired. In 1992, Saïd won a unanimous verdict in a libel case in the British high court, and was awarded £400,000 in damages. The case concerned letters that had been published alleging that Saïd was untrustworthy. Saïd described the letters as "humiliating and untrue", and that the allegations in the letters had caused him "tremendous damage". Saïd owned almost 50% of British Mediterranean Airways, and loaned the airline £8 million before its 2007 sale to BMI. Saïd's wealth was estimated at £1.5 billion by the Sunday Times Rich List in 2014. In 1995 Saïd co-founded Sagitta Asset Management, which handled his family's wealth and the assets of other ultra high-net-worth individuals and their families, it was sold to Fleming Family & Partners in 2005. Saïd also invested in the merchant bank established by Jonathan Aitken, Aitken Hume, and invested £5 million in the short lived Sunday Correspondent newspaper. In the United States Saïd invested in the National Bank of Washington and Garfinckel's stores. Al-Yamamah contract Saïd helped facilitate the al-Yamamah deal between the British and Saudi governments in the 1980s. The al-Yamamah deal is the biggest export deal in British history and has generated £43 billion in revenue for the British company BAE Systems. The Daily Telegraph has described Saïd as a 'key fixer' who 'helped broker' the deal, with the Guardian describing Said as the 'fixer at the heart' of the deal. The Guardian newspaper wrote that from the proceeds of al-Yamamah '[British] Police later calculated that more than £6bn may have been distributed in corrupt commissions, via an array of agents and middlemen'. In June 2007, the BBC's Panorama alleged BAE Systems had paid Prince Bandar "hundreds of millions of pounds" in return for his role in the al-Yamamah deals. Turki bin Nasser was also a recipient of money from BAE. An investigation into the al-Yamamah deal was opened by the British Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and later closed for reasons of national security after the Saudi Arabian government had threatened to withhold cooperation on anti-terrorist issues. In a 2007 statement issued by Saïd on the al-Yamamah deal said that he had "...never been the 'business manager' for anybody, let