After being arrested in July for carrying a satellite phone without permission from authorities while on vacation, a senior executive of Saudi Aramco spent nearly a week in custody in Uttarakhand. He was released after paying a Rs 1,000 fine.
According to Fergus MacLeod, Saudi Aramco’s head of investor relations, he was arrested on July 12 at his hotel in the Valley of Flowers National Park. The 62-year-old man was imprisoned in Chamoli until July 18.
Authorities detained the British executive after obtaining the coordinates of the phone, which MacLeod claims he turned on and off at his hotel but did not use while on vacation with friends, some of whom were Saudi Aramco colleagues.
A part of Chamoli district is located along the Line of Actual Control with China.
Without government permission, foreign nationals are not permitted to own or operate satellite phones in India. Satellite phones, which receive signals from satellites rather than terrestrial towers like cellphones, were used by terrorists during the 2008 Mumbai attacks, prompting the bans.
MacLeod, who has led investor relations at Saudi Aramco since 2017, told the Financial Times that he was unaware of the ban and had passed through two Indian airports while openly carrying the phone without being stopped by security.
Narendra Singh Rawat, a Chamoli police officer, confirmed MacLeod’s arrest. Rawat stated that the executive had carried the phone “by mistake.”
MacLeod stated that he purchased the device legally in the UK in 2017 for personal use and carried it with him while travelling in the Saudi desert in case of an emergency in remote areas with poor mobile phone signal.
“It was a frightening place and a highly traumatic experience, where I was in a communal cell with long-term prisoners who had committed very serious crimes,” said MacLeod.
MacLeod, who complied with authorities, claimed that his friends secured his release from jail by posting bail on his behalf. He couldn’t leave the nation, though, until after a court hearing on July 27, when he pleaded guilty and paid a Rs 1,000 ($12) fine.
This comes at a time when Saudi Arabia seeks to strengthen ties with India, which is becoming an increasingly important buyer of Saudi crude oil as the country’s middle class expands. MacLeod, who previously worked as the head of investor relations at BP and as an oil analyst at Deutsche Bank, was hired by Saudi Aramco to help professionalise its operations and management structures ahead of its historic IPO in 2019.
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