Fergus MacLeod, a Senior Executive of Saudi Aramco spent a week in custody in Uttarakhand for carrying a satellite phone without permission from authorities while on vacation. He was released after paying a Rs 1,000 fine.
The executive was arrested in July at his hotel in the Valley of Flowers National Park. Narendra Singh Rawat, a Chamoli police officer, confirmed Fergus MacLeod’s arrest. Without government permission, foreign nationals are not permitted to own or operate satellite phones in India. Satellite phones receive signals from satellites rather than terrestrial towers like cellphones and were used by terrorists in the 2008 Mumbai attacks that prompted the ban.
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.
MacLeod claimed that his friends secured his release from jail by posting bail on his behalf. MacLeod previously worked as the head of investor relations at BP and as an oil analyst at Deutsche Bank and was hired by Saudi Aramco to help professionalise its operations and management structures ahead of its historic IPO in 2019.
