LONDON (AP) – A Saudi prince received millions of dollars for his own use as part of an $80 billion arms deal between Saudi Arabia and Britain in 1985, the British Broadcasting Corp. said in a statement on an upcoming report.

The payments went to Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who negotiated the Al-Yamamah arms deal to sell 100 British warplanes to Saudi Arabia when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, the BBC said in the statement Wednesday.

Its full report on the arms deal is scheduled to air Monday on the “Panorama” program.

BAE Systems, the prime contractor, has denied that it violated British law in relation to the contract. Prince Bandar refused to comment on the report, the BBC said.

Al-Yamamah, meaning “the dove,” was the name given to an agreement under which BAE supplied Tornado fighter jets and other military equipment to Saudi Arabia, which paid the British government with oil. The full extent of the deal was never revealed but it was widely believed to be Britain’s largest-ever export agreement.

Last year, Prime Minister Tony Blair called off an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into allegations that BAE ran a $120 million “slush fund” offering sweeteners to Saudi officials in return for contracts as part of the deal.

The decision to stop the probe was criticized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the United States lodged a formal complaint with Britain about the case.

Speaking at the Group of Eight summit in Germany on Thursday, Mr. Blair refused to comment on the allegations raised in the BBC report, but repeated his long-standing defense of his government’s actions. He said he halted the investigation because he didn’t believe it “would have led anywhere except to the complete wreckage of a vital strategic relationship for our country.”

At the time, lawmakers from opposition parties as well as Blair’s own Labour Party accused him of bowing to Saudi demands.

The BBC report says that up to $240 million a year was sent by BAE to two Saudi Embassy accounts in Washington, according to the news organization’s statement. There was no distinction between the accounts of the embassy and official government accounts, the BBC said.

“The BBC’s ‘Panorama’ program has established that these accounts were actually a conduit to Prince Bandar. … The purpose of one of the accounts was to pay the expenses of the prince’s private Airbus,” the statement read.

Roger Berry, who chairs a House of Commons committee which reviews arms deals, said Thursday that “these matters need to be properly investigated.”

“It’s bad for British business, apart from anything else, if allegations of bribery popping around aren’t investigated,” Mr. Berry told BBC radio.

Prince Bandar resigned as ambassador to Washington two years ago after spending 22 years in the post. He is a son of Prince Sultan, the Saudi defense minister, and was educated in Britain and America. He now heads Saudi Arabia’s National Security Council.

Prince Bandar has had a close relationship with President George H.W. Bush and the current president. He has been a frequent visitor to the White House and to President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas