"What the butler saw (and heard and then recorded)"
Agatha
Christie's whodunits invariably rotate around what someone (often the butler)
had seen , and so it is with the SBM Offshore bribery case. As I said yesterday
the whistleblower, Jonathan Taylor (aka
"FE") was the number
two in-house lawyer at the company and his original exposé can still be
found on the DeepWeb. In that post not only does he detail the countries and
bribes paid, but he sets out in detail the reaction and planning of the senior
management. Mr Taylor also refers to various recordings: he had recorded a
number of key meetings on his telephone, something which under Monaco's laws is
permitted in certain circumstances.
Effective
use of Open Source
Intelligence techniques enables one to put together a fairly clear
picture of who did what, who paid what, and who was at the receiving end of the
company's generosity - I use Angola as an example below. Verification is a key
issue, hence independent evidence or proof is
important. Whilst press articles and governance blogs are good sources,
the real meat tends to come from sites accessed within the DeepWeb, where a
simple Google search will not reveal anything.
Issue #1: Who was the company paying?
The
initial section of the post ("Section
A - Documents") sets out who was being "paid". I note that
in Angola the recipient was a Panamanian
company Mardrill Inc. which is said to have been "controlled by 3 Sonangol
executives: Messrs. Sumbe, Benge and Dos Santos". Sumbe will probably refer to Baptista
Sumbe the Chairman of Sonangol Holdings and non-exec director of GALP; as a
side note I would point to a recent MakaAngola
article on Mr Sumbe alleging money-laundering in the USA. Next up is Benge;
the is probably José
Pedro Benge, director of Sonangol USA, of Sonangol Shipping Holding and
various other positions.
As to
which member of the Dos Santos family the post refers to, one has to turn to Open Corporates, a wonderful site that
documents what public information there is on millions of "secret"
offshore companies. Mardrill
Inc. of Panama is listed on the site and is still operational. Fernando Dos
Santos (aka "Nando") is listed as a director. Nando
Dos Santos, a cousin of the country's President, is currently the President
of the National Assembly and previously was the country's Prime Minister and
then Vice President. A useful contact for SBM Offshore given its business
interests.
In terms
of verification, the company that Mr Taylor named in his
"allegations" exists; the surnames he mentioned also exist and would
seem to relate to senior members of the Angolan establishment; and finally,
external data-sources show these three men as being directors of that
Panamanian company. So whilst SBM cast aspersions about Mr Taylor, his
character and his motives, the data he has made public is looking pretty firm.
The
seniority of the contacts being paid was the same in other countries: in Equatorial Guinea it was mainly cash for Gabriel
Obiang - youngest son of the President and the current Minister of Mines,
Industry and Energy (some call him the "Lord and Master" of EG's
oil). Then in Brazil, as we know, and as
the company has admitted, two-thirds of all payments went to senior Petrobras
executives and from there supposedly to
the coffers of the Workers Party. So SBM Offshore was well used to greasing the
wheels.
The fines
and settlements reached to date cover "wrongdoings" by SBM's agents
in three countries: Angola, Equatorial Guinea, and Brazil. Yet recent court
documentation from the Netherlands sets out a history of bribes being paid
in other countries. This is a copy of the defence document of Jonathan Taylor
against SBM Offshore, who are now trying to sue him for (amongst other things)
'lying' - so one has to read the content with that in mind. Clause 2.21 on page 10 reads: "In
addition, under the Moswen Resources Sales Consultancy Agreement, Tagher was
contracted to pay bribes on behalf of SBM in Tanzania, Congo, Ghana, Gabon,
Greece, Bulgaria, Nigeria, India, Vietnam, Equatorial Guinea and
Angola." Further to these other
countries the Wiki page refers to Unaoil being used to pay bribes in Iraq,
Kazakhstan and Italy. Unaoil
is being investigated by the UK's Serious
Fraud Office.
Issue #2: what triggered the alleged cover-up?
In an interview
given in 2015 to the Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland Jonathan Taylor tells that on Tuesday 31st
January 2012 the company received a call from a US-based lawyer calling on
behalf of Noble Energy (a large US oil services company). The lawyer said the
his client has discovered information on a company laptop incriminating SBM
Offshore in the payment of bribes. The company immediately launched an internal
investigation (see section "Absolute
Chaos"): or some of the company did, whilst other senior managers took
a different approach.
As stated
one of the types of evidence Mr Taylor uses in his defence against SBM is
transcripts of meetings within the company that he attended. Clearly this
content cannot be verified, but given his record for accuracy to date, the
transcripts are at the very least "embarrassing" to the company. Very
little was known publicly about this content until the company made yet
another attempt to silence Mr Taylor. Now much of the juicier content has been posted on the web,
making the company's position all the more uncomfortable.
In future
posts we will deal with the allegations of a physical cover-up...
No comments:
Post a Comment