My father, Alfred Donovan, passed away earlier today in Colchester Essex, after a short illness.  “Don”, as he was known to friends and family, served in the UK Regular Army – Royal Corp of Signals (Royal Berkshire Regiment) – for 12 years. From December 1933 until March 1946 he served in the UK, Palestine, Egypt and India, and he fought in the Burma campaign in World War 2. He was a successful businessman operating a chain of garages in East London for many years, before co-founding the sales promotion agency Don Marketing, which had many blue chip clients, including Guinness, Whitbread, BP, Conoco and Royal Dutch Shell. Nearly 10 years ago he was the co-founder of this website. He was everything that anyone would wish their father to be. read more

Because of the “royaldutchshellplc.com” domain name, we regularly receive job applications, business proposals, pension enquiries, and sometimes even terrorist threats meant for Shell. We deal with all such matters as agreed with Mr Brandjes, sometimes corresponding with third parties on behalf of Shell, occasionally passing on correspondence to him.  We have been offered oil wells and coalmines by third parties wrongly believing that we are Shell.

LETTER DATED 24 JUNE 2013 FROM ALFRED & JOHN DONOVAN TO SHELL INTERNATIONAL LIMITED

24 June 2013

Mr. Gary Thomson

Shell International Limited

Shell Centre

London SE1 7NA

UK

Dear Mr Thomson

Data Protection Act 1998 Subject Access Request (SAR)

Thank you for your letter dated 19 June 2013.

Please find enclosed completed application forms together with cheques based on a fee of £10 per applicant, if that is appropriate.

The application is made on an annual basis in joint names; the formula sensibly requested by your former colleague Mr Richard Wiseman and agreed to by us.

The categories of  “Particular Personal Data” you have brought to our attention in the standard form supplied are not appropriate to our application. You do not have any category that is relevant to our relationship with Shell, which is unique. read more

I last wrote to you on 1st March 1999. I did so in the knowledge that your esteemed family is one of the largest single shareholders in Shell. I warned you about what I described as “a culture of deception and cover-up deeply ingrained at the highest levels of Shell”.

FINANCIAL TIMES

EXTRACT

Joanna and the other demonstrator, Hans Maessen of the Dutch Republican Association, were arrested by agents several minutes later after she tried to hoist an expletive-laden sign attacking the royal family for their holdings in Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil company.

FULL FT ARTICLE

EXTRACTS FROM A LETTER WE SENT TO QUEEN BEATRIX ON 21 APRIL 2004 ABOUT THE ROYAL DUTCH SHELL RESERVES FRAUD

21 April 2004

HM QUEEN BEATRIX OF THE NETHERLANDS                                 
Huis ten Bosch Palace
The Hague

Your Gracious Majesty

THE ROYAL DUTCH SHELL GROUP

I last wrote to you on 1st March 1999. I did so in the knowledge that your esteemed family is one of the largest single shareholders in Shell. I warned you about what I described as “a culture of deception and cover-up deeply ingrained at the highest levels of Shell”. read more

Christopher Helman, Forbes Staff: I’m based in Houston, Texas. Energy capital of the world.

David Lawrence, the executive vice president directly responsible for Alaskan operations has left the company. A Shell spokesman says that “Mr. Lawrence’s departure from Shell is by mutual consent.” Lawrence had been with Shell since 1984. His departure was first reported on the site started by longtime Shell gadfly Alfred Donovan. So will David Lawrence be enough of a sacrificial lamb for Shell to satisfy investors that it’s learned its lessons? Or should the buck stop higher up the pecking order, perhaps with Marvin Odum, president of the entire Americas division…; If Odum can be this disingenuous about a certified “screw up” then you have to wonder: what else at Shell is subject to subterfuge?

Published 3/26/2013 @ 1:20PM

David Lawrence, the executive vice president directly responsible for Alaskan operations has left the company. A Shell spokesman says that “Mr. Lawrence’s departure from Shell is by mutual consent.” Lawrence had been with Shell since 1984. His departure was first reported on the site started by longtime Shell gadfly Alfred Donovan.

A year ago Lawrence had said that Shell’s planned Arctic drilling “is relatively easy.” So it’s fitting that he was made to answer for the disastrous Alaskan campaign which was marred by a host of delays, accidents and mishaps. The misadventure resulted in a couple of wells being started, then abandoned, and one of Shell’s rigs, the Kulluk, being damaged in a grounding near Kodiak Island. “ Shell screwed up in 2012,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar earlier this month. read more

By John Donovan

Shell has for many years supposedly operated within an ethical code which, according to its current shell.com webpage on the subject, was first published in 1976.

This does not tally with the relevant pages in “A HISTORY OF ROYAL DUTCH SHELL, Volume 3,” about the history of the code – known in the 1990’s as the Shell Statement of General Business Principles.

Apparently they were first drafted in 1962, restated and first published in 1976, made freely available to the public from 1981 and reformulated in 1997, for the first time including human rights. read more

FROM OUR SEPT 2005 SHELL NEWS ARCHIVE

ROYAL DUTCH SHELL ROBBERS AND RASCALS

“…Shell shareholders have to foot the bill for lawyers fees run up in the course of defending fat cat crooks, such as Sir Phillip Watts, the disgraced former Group Chairman of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. Sir Phillip ended up with a $18 million USD pension pot AND with all his ongoing legal fees being paid by Shell shareholders. This was after he had LIED AND COVERED UP THE TRUTH ABOUT SHELL’S RESERVES, AND IN THE PROCESS, DESTROYED SHELL’S REPUTATION”

By Alfred Donovan: Monday 12 Sept 2005

The press is having a field day in devising colourful headlines about the scandal ridden Royal Dutch Shell Group. An article in “The Sunday Times” yesterday had a story under the headline: “Shell move robs UK investors”. It reported on the horrendous tax implications for UK Royal Dutch shareholders resulting from the recent Royal Dutch/Shell unification and the dubious way in which Shell has dealt with the controversy thus far.

Yesterdays “Independent on Sunday” used the term “Clever Rascals” about Shell in a headline relating to the Sakhalin project in Russia and the potential ramifications in respect of the critically endangered western grey whale. For the record, the Encarta Online Dictionary definition of a “rascal” is: “dishonest person: somebody, especially a man, who is dishonest or otherwise unethical”. read more

John Donovan, Shell Shareholder

Free access to over 40,000 articles, comment, historical information and news archive relating to corporate tax dodger Royal Dutch Shell, the world’s third largest company by revenue.

A TV documentary feature about our co-founder John Alfred Donovan, has aired in many countries. A related article was published in 10 languages.

John  is wrongly credited on zoominfo.com as being the founder, owner and Group Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell. He is, in fact, a long-term shareholder in Royal Dutch Shell Plc and its predecessor, Shell Transport & Trading Company Limited. read more

It seems to me slightly over-the-top for the Sakhalin Energy source to compare the Russian Federation Government dealings with the Donovans to “another mistake similar to signing The Non-Aggression Pact between the USSR and Germany of 1939…”

By John Donovan

Definition of a “loose cannon” – An unpredictable or uncontrolled person who is likely to cause unintentional damage.

Over the last few days I have received many emails from a disgruntled translator, apparently a lady, who has been involved for some years in the Sakhalin 1 and 2 oil and gas projects.

The number, frequency and length of the emails has increased. An email received yesterday was several A4 pages in length. Eight more emails were received last night.

The most recent emails are all addressed to me and copied to many people in Sakhalin Energy and the ExxonMobil Sakhalin project. read more

Law of the Internet by George B. Delta and Jeffrey H. Matsuura (Oct 2008)

Excerpt from 2011-1 SUPPLEMENT 8-28

“The Sixth Circuit took the position that these negative domain names used in conjunction with Web sites that raised criticism of commercial conduct were forms of expression protected by the First Amendment.93 In some instances, critics of an organization register domain names using marks associated with the target company in order to prevent the company from using those domains or to use the domains to present Web content critical of the target organization. This type of dispute exists between Royal Dutch/Shell Group and Alfred Donovan, involving the domain name www.royaldutchshellplc.com.94″ read more

FROM OUR ARCHIVES…

Another dampener on Shell’s biggest corporate overhaul since the two holding firms tied up in 1907, is a spat over the rights to the web domain “royaldutchshellplc.com.” Disgruntled shareholder Alfred Donovan beat Shell to register the domain name. Shell has sued Donovan for the rights to the domain but while the matter plays out, Donovan uses the site to lambaste Shell management.

The Washington Post: Shell shareholders to back unification

Friday 24 June 2005

All Reuters News DUBLIN (Reuters) – Royal Dutch/Shell shareholders are expected to vote overwhelmingly in favor of scrapping the oil giant’s century-old dual-listed structure on Tuesday.

Shell hopes the unification of its Dutch and British parent companies will improve management efficiency and accountability, areas on which the firm needs to reassure investors after a damaging reserves overbooking scandal last year.

“It’s what investors have been calling for. Hopefully it will sail through … we hope it’s going to augur a new era,” said Richard Lewis, who manages $8 billion, including Royal Dutch shares, for New Star Asset Management in London. read more

Because of the royaldutchshellplc.com domain name, we receive job applications, business proposals, pension enquiries, even threats meant for Shell (as supplied today). We deal with all such matters as agreed with Mr Brandjes, sometimes corresponding with the parties on behalf of Shell, occasionally passing on correspondence to him.  We have been offered oil wells and coalmines.

LETTER SENT TO MR GARY THOMSON, SHELL INTERNATIONAL LIMITED ON 30 May 2012: FROM ALFRED AND JOHN DONOVAN

Dear Mr Thomson

Data Protection Act 1998 – Subject Access Request (SAR)

Thank you for your letter dated 14 May 2012.

Please find enclosed completed application forms together with cheques based on a fee of £10 per applicant, if that is appropriate.

The application is made on an annual basis in joint names; the formula requested by your former colleague Mr Richard Wiseman and agreed to by us. Mr Wiseman informed us that after his retirement as Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer of Royal Dutch Shell Plc., the Company Secretary and General Counsel Corporate, Mr Michiel Brandjes, would be our designated contact with Shell. This has been the case since Mr Wiseman’s departure. read more

The firm was accused in a 2001 Sunday Times article of helping BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc spy on Greenpeace using a German agent called Manfred Schlickenrieder, who posed as a left-wing film-maker. Free University’s Blancke, who studied the incident, has computer files taken from Schlickenrieder’s room by environmental activists who became suspicious of his behavior. Those files include e-mails from Hakluyt.

By Kit Chellel and Jeremy Hodges – May 24, 2012 12:00 AM GMT+0100

Hakluyt & Co., the corporate investigations firm that hired British businessman Neil Heywood as a consultant in China, has been thrust by his death into a place it promises clients it will never be: the limelight.

“We guarantee complete confidentiality,” Hakluyt director Christopher James told Enron Corp.’s then Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling in 2001, according to an e-mail exchange that was released during a U.S. investigation into the bankrupt energy company. Hakluyt, James wrote, “places an unparalleled private intelligence network at the personal disposal of senior commercial figures.” read more

Derek Brower (Editor, Petroleum Economist): 25 February 2007

It is not the kind of place you would expect to find at the centre of a global energy war. John Donovan’s office is in a modest house in a suburb of Colchester. No electronic maps of Europe adorn his walls, as they do the walls of Gazprom’s Moscow control room. And nor are there any butlers bringing cups of tea and expensive biscuits, as you find at Shell’s head office on the Thames. There is just Donovan’s 89-year-old father, Alfred, in the room next door. read more

The Sunday Telegraph: 10 September 2007

ARTICLE ABOUT GRIPE WEBSITES

EXTRACTS

Today’s activists are giving business a bloody nose from behind their keyboards – not the barricades.

Revolutions used to happen in the streets – these days they take place online. And the targets are more often big businesses than bad governments. Banks, in particular, are feeling the brunt of grassroots internet campaigns.

Courts and trademark bodies are increasingly supportive of individuals and pressure groups when someone registers a domain name similar to that of their target so long as the site is non-commercial, with no subscriptions and no paid advertising. read more

The following extract printed in red text is from a Shell internal email supplied to us by Shell in response to a Subject Access Request we made under the UK Data Protection Act (equivalent of U.S. Freedom of Information law). Some third party information has been redacted by Shell.

FROM A HAPLESS SHELL OFFICIAL:

John and Alfred Donovan well known in UK / Hague. They perceive Shell played them and so have made it their mission to embarrass, belittle and criticize Shell, which they do quite well. Their website, royaldutchsellplc.com is an excellent source of group news and comment and I recommend it far above what our own group internal comms puts out. read more

By Clémence Grison (paris): 29.03.2012

John Donovan, who worked with Shell, reveals damaging information on the oil giant. This personal revenge has already cost the Anglo-Dutch company billions of dollars.

John Donovan, 64, is a meticulous man and very knowledgeable. For several years he has spent most of his time on what he describes as his “super-hobby”: the website royaldutchshellplc.com with scoops on the evils of the multinational.

We simply ask the leaders of Shell to respect the principles they claim to honor already. read more