According to the newspaper, rights groups and activists, including Amnesty International officials, said that if the bid is successful, the firm may be viewed as complicit to the human rights abuses attributed to Saudi Arabia during the ongoing war in Yemen.

“We’d like to know what due diligence the company has done. The United Nations guiding principles on business and human rights make it clear that a company may be viewed as complicit if they are seen to benefit from abuses committed by another party,” said Peter Frankental, Amnesty International UK’s economic affairs program director.

The media outlet added that the PwC, should it win the contract, would reshape recruitment, resourcing, performance management and strategic planning in the Saudi defense system.

The company, however, failed to say what assurances it will put in place to avoid an involvement in a devastating Saudi war on Yemen, which has already killed 15,000 people, most of them civilians.

Britain and Saudi Arabia agree to finalize a warplane deal despite protests against Riyadh's deadly war on Yemen.

The United Nations estimates that some 22 million people in Yemen, about 80 percent of the population in the impoverished country, are now in need of humanitarian aid as a result of three years of illegal US-Saudi war. 

Many have criticized Western countries, especially the UK, for their military support to Saudi Arabia, saying the kingdom is using weapons purchased from those countries against defenseless civilians in Yemen.