Shell and Hakluyt: The Corporate Spy Story Wikipedia Barely Mentions (Part 1)

(This article is Part 1 of a series on Shell’s relationship with private intelligence firm Hakluyt & Company and how that story has been handled on Wikipedia. Part 2 looks at the vanishing “Controversies surrounding Royal Dutch Shell” article and a personal footnote about my late father.)

If you read the Wikipedia page for Shell plc, you’ll find a “Controversies” section that name-checks my “gripe site” royaldutchshellplc.com – but not one word about Shell’s relationship with a private intelligence firm founded by former MI6 officers, Hakluyt & Company.

By contrast, the Wikipedia article on Hakluyt & Company openly acknowledges that:

• Hakluyt was founded in 1995 by former officials of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).

• It “works for large corporations, and has close links with large oil firms.”

• Peter Cazalet, former deputy chairman of BP, helped establish Hakluyt, and Peter Holmes, former chairman of Shell, served as president of the Hakluyt foundation.

• In 2001, The Sunday Times reported that Shell and BP hired Hakluyt to collect information on Greenpeace.

So: the “spy firm” page admits Shell was a client; the Shell page omits the spy firm entirely.

This article explains why that matters – and why the Shell–Hakluyt relationship is, in my view, one of the most revealing chapters in Shell’s modern history.

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Who – and what – is Hakluyt?

Hakluyt & Company is a London-based corporate intelligence and “strategic advisory” firm set up in the mid-1990s by former MI6 officers Christopher James and Mike Reynolds.

Public reporting (including the Financial Times and later investigative work summarised by outlets like Powerbase) describes Hakluyt’s model roughly as follows:

• It maintains a network of more than 100 “associates” around the world – ex-spies, former diplomats, business insiders, and investigative journalists.

• For each assignment, a small group of associates is called in, briefed in London, and then “deployed” to gather intelligence.

• Associates may pose as journalists, consultants or activists, depending on the target.

 

Hakluyt itself has always insisted that it operates within the law and does not engage in “dirty tricks”. But the public record shows that some of its work has been controversial enough to trigger calls for parliamentary inquiries – particularly where environmental campaigners were concerned.

Crucially for our purposes, the firm’s own Wikipedia entry acknowledges two Shell-specific facts:

1. Shell leadership was embedded in Hakluyt’s oversight structure (Peter Holmes as president of its foundation).

2. Shell and BP hired Hakluyt to gather intelligence on Greenpeace, as reported by The Sunday Times in 2001.

 

Those two sentences alone justify treating Hakluyt as part of Shell’s extended security and influence apparatus.

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Shell chairmen as Hakluyt “spymasters”

 

My own research, compiled across royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnews.net and shellnazihistory.com, shows that Shell’s links to Hakluyt went far beyond a simple client–contractor relationship.

• Sir Peter Holmes, former chairman of Shell Transport and Trading, was president of the Hakluyt Foundation, a body supposedly providing ethical oversight of Hakluyt’s operations.

• Sir William Purves, another Shell Transport director, served as chairman of Hakluyt & Company Ltd and was a significant shareholder.

 

In other words, titled Shell directors were not just customers; they were owners and overseers of a secretive intelligence firm that worked for Shell against its perceived enemies.

Contemporaneous Shell–Hakluyt accounts, which I have examined and published extracts from, reinforce the impression of a tight interlock: the same individuals appearing as directors and major shareholders on both sides of the relationship.

I did not know any of this when my own litigation with Shell was at its most intense in the late 1990s. Only later, as I dug deeper and Hakluyt’s activities came to light in the press, did the full picture begin to emerge.

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My first brush with corporate espionage – and the missing disclosure

 

In the run-up to the Smart High Court trial in 1999 – litigation over Shell’s use of our Don Marketing Smart loyalty card concept – my family and key witnesses were subjected to what I can only describe as a campaign of cloak-and-dagger activity:

• A man using the name “Christopher Phillips”, claiming to be from “Cofton Consultants”, visited my offices and asked probing questions under false pretences. Shell later admitted in writing that Phillips had been instructed by them (via their solicitors) but claimed this was for routine credit enquiries.

• An anonymous caller with detailed inside knowledge of Shell’s legal strategy warned of a campaign that could be “financially ruinous” and said my family and witnesses could be “endangered” if we persisted. Police, BT investigators and a national newspaper subsequently traced the call to a London payphone and confirmed that the caller was intimately familiar with Shell’s plans.

• Within weeks, three burglaries occurred at the homes of people associated with the litigation – including my main witness, my solicitor and myself. In each case, personal valuables were largely untouched; documents relating to the case had been disturbed or examined. These incidents were serious enough to be formally reported to the police and referenced under oath during the Smart trial.

 

Shell’s legal director at the time, admitted in correspondence that Phillips had been engaged as an investigator but denied any knowledge of intimidation or burglaries. Police later told me off the record that they believed there had been a criminal conspiracy against us, but there was insufficient evidence to secure a conviction.

What Shell did not disclose – to me, to the police, or to the court – was that at the very same time:

• Its own titled directors, Holmes and Purves, were deeply involved in Hakluyt;

• Hakluyt’s normal modus operandi involved the use of covert “associates”, sometimes from overseas, to carry out sensitive assignments and then leave the jurisdiction.

 

I want to be precise here:

I cannot prove that Hakluyt was behind the burglaries, anonymous threats or the activities of Christopher Phillips. Shell has never admitted any such connection, and the police could not establish one to the standard required for criminal charges.

But with hindsight, and knowing what we now know about Shell’s role in Hakluyt and the firm’s use of undercover operatives, it is hard not to see my case as an early, domestic example of a broader pattern.

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The Sunday Times exposé: spying on Greenpeace and The Body Shop

 

Two years later, the pattern burst into public view.

On 17 June 2001, The Sunday Times ran a front-page story by Maurice Chittenden and Nicholas Rufford under the headline: “MI6 ‘Firm’ Spied on Green Groups”.

Drawing on documents and sources later summarised by CorpWatch and others, the article reported that:

• A private intelligence firm with close links to MI6 – Hakluyt & Company – had spied on environmental groups to collect information for oil companies, including Shell and BP.

• Hakluyt had deployed a German agent, Manfred Schlickenrieder, codenamed “Camus”, who posed as a left-wing film-maker to infiltrate Greenpeace and other groups in Germany and elsewhere.

• Schlickenrieder’s brief included gathering information about Greenpeace’s plans to disrupt North Atlantic oil operations and to monitor Anita Roddick’s Body Shop group over its opposition to Shell drilling in Nigerian tribal lands.

 

According to the same reporting:

• Both BP and Shell admitted hiring Hakluyt but claimed they were unaware of the specific undercover tactics used. Shell said it wanted to protect staff from possible attack.

 

The scandal triggered calls in Parliament for then–Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to investigate whether MI6 had used Hakluyt as a front to spy on green groups.

Subsequent commentary – notably by researcher Eveline Lubbers in her book Battling Big Business – placed the case squarely in the context of an emerging corporate espionage industry, where ex-intelligence officers sell their skills to multinationals seeking to monitor and, in some cases, neutralise civil society opponents.

It is worth stressing: this is not my allegation alone; it is mainstream, well-documented journalism and academic work that even Hakluyt’s own Wikipedia page now summarises.

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Hakluyt today: still influential, still close to power

 

Far from fading into obscure history, Hakluyt has only grown more embedded in the British establishment:

• The firm’s international advisory board has recently been chaired by former foreign secretary Lord William Hague.

• In 2023, Bloomberg reported that the UK Labour Party had “brought in” Hakluyt to help court business leaders (Hakluyt said it does not work for political parties).

• Investigations in 2025 revealed that Thames Water had paid over £1m to Hakluyt for strategic advice, prompting concerns about the firm’s role in shaping policy for a financially distressed, heavily regulated utility.

 

At the same time, Hakluyt has sought to distance itself from its early years. As one recent openDemocracy piece noted, when asked about the 2001 Greenpeace operation, the company now insists it has “no relationship with the spooky world” and that snooping on NGOs would be “beyond the pale”.

Yet the basic architecture remains:

• Ex-MI6 officers at the helm

• Discreet assignments for major corporations and institutions

• A strong preference for operating out of the spotlight

 

Shell, for its part, has kept a revolving door open between its own security department and Hakluyt. Former senior MI6 officer Ian Forbes McCredie, for example, served as Vice President of Corporate Security (Corporate Affairs Security) at Shell until 2010 and later had a direct role at Hakluyt; an out-of-office reply from his Shell email even directed correspondents to his Hakluyt address.

From my perspective, it is hard to see that as anything other than a single security ecosystem that spans Shell, Hakluyt and other parts of the British establishment.

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The story Wikipedia tells – and the story it leaves out

 

Given all of the above, you might expect Shell’s Wikipedia “Controversies” section to mention:

• Shell’s past use of Hakluyt to gather intelligence on Greenpeace and other campaigners

• The dual roles of Shell chairmen Holmes and Purves in Hakluyt

• The wider record of corporate surveillance and undercover activity involving Shell

 

It does not.

Instead, the current Shell plc page lists, among other things:

• Climate-change lobbying and accusations of greenwashing

• Various environmental and legal disputes

• A detailed paragraph on royaldutchshellplc.com, describing it as a “gripe site” that has acted as a leak platform for Shell insiders.

 

I have no objection to that entry; it is broadly accurate and properly sourced. My point is about proportionality.

On Wikipedia today:

• The website run by a retired Shell promotion contractor is a controversy worth its own subsection.

• The multi-year relationship between Shell and a covert intelligence firm run by ex-MI6 officers – a firm exposed for infiltrating Greenpeace and targeting The Body Shop and Nigerian activists – is effectively airbrushed from Shell’s main article, surviving only as a passing reference on Hakluyt’s page.

 

That is not a neutral omission. It shapes what millions of readers see when they quickly scan “what Shell has done wrong”.

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Why this matters now

 

Some might argue that all this is ancient history: Shell no longer bombs its opponents with covert agents; Hakluyt says it has moved on; corporate intelligence is just part of modern business.

I disagree, for three reasons:

1. Patterns of behaviour

   The Hakluyt story sits alongside other examples of Shell using covert means – undercover investigators, corporate security units staffed by ex-intelligence officers, carefully crafted deniability – in ways that go well beyond normal “reputation management”.

2. Democratic oversight

   When a company as large as Shell quietly deploys ex-spies to monitor and infiltrate NGOs, it raises questions about accountability, free association and the right to protest. Parliament itself recognised this when MPs called for an inquiry into Hakluyt’s activities after the 2001 revelations.

3. Control of the public record

   The fact that Shell’s spy firm barely features in mainstream corporate histories, but my website does, speaks volumes about who gets to define “controversy” in the Wikipedia era. If relationships like Shell–Hakluyt are pushed to the margins, the public loses sight of how far some corporations will go to protect their interests.

 

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My conclusion

 

I have been in conflict with Shell for more than three decades. Over that time I have seen the company:

• hire undercover agents under false identities;

• preside over a period in which my family and witnesses were subjected to threats and unexplained burglaries;

• employ, and then recycle, former MI6 officers at senior levels in its own global security operation;

• and stand at the centre of a major scandal in which a private intelligence firm infiltrated environmental and human-rights groups on its behalf.

 

Some of those facts are disputed; some cannot (yet) be proven to a courtroom standard. But a great deal is now on the record – in court documents, parliamentary debates, serious newspapers and academic research.

What remains striking is not that Shell worked with Hakluyt. It is that so few people know it did.

When you look up Shell on Wikipedia, you are told – correctly – about my “gripe site”. You are not told that Shell’s own former chairman helped run a private spy outfit that infiltrated Greenpeace and tracked activists opposing Shell’s operations.

That is why this story still matters.

It is not just about spooks and intrigue; it is about who gets to define reality when powerful companies would prefer certain chapters of their history to be forgotten.

Next in this series: [Hakluyt, Shell and the Vanishing Wikipedia Article – and a Personal Footnote] – how a detailed “Controversies” page, including Hakluyt, disappeared from Wikipedia, and what that says about real-name versus anonymous editing

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