SHELL, HAKLUYT AND THE MEN FROM MI6: A CORPORATE INTELLIGENCE NETWORK HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
From Neil Heywood’s mysterious death in China to Shell directors simultaneously occupying positions inside Hakluyt, the documented connections are too extensive to dismiss as coincidence
By John Donovan
The story of Neil Heywood—the British businessman whose murder helped bring down one of China’s most powerful political families—has long been surrounded by questions about espionage, private intelligence and Hakluyt & Company.
Heywood was reported to have undertaken work for Hakluyt, the discreet corporate-intelligence consultancy founded by former officers of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. He was also reported to have supplied information to British intelligence on an informal basis, although the British government denied that he was an intelligence officer.
What has never been established is whether Heywood performed any work connected with Shell.
That distinction is important.
There is no evidence presently available to me proving that Neil Heywood worked for Shell, investigated Shell’s critics or had any involvement in Shell’s commercial activities in China. Shell was asked about the matter but, to my knowledge, never provided a substantive answer.
The absence of an answer is not proof.
The wider Shell–Hakluyt relationship, however, is not speculation. It is documented in company records, contemporary press reporting and Shell’s own history.
Once those records are placed alongside Shell’s admitted use of investigators against my father and me—and Shell’s later admission that it hired people from MI6—a remarkably close and arguably incestuous corporate-intelligence network comes into view.
Who was Neil Heywood?
Neil Heywood was a British businessman who had lived in China for many years. He became closely associated with Bo Xilai, the ambitious Communist Party official who was once regarded as a possible future leader of China, and Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai.
Heywood was found dead in a hotel room in Chongqing in November 2011.
His death was initially attributed to alcohol poisoning. It was later treated as murder. Chinese authorities alleged that he had been poisoned with cyanide following a dispute involving the Bo family.
Gu Kailai was convicted of his murder in August 2012. Her suspended death sentence was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment. Bo Xilai was later convicted of bribery, corruption and abuse of power and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The scandal shook the Chinese political establishment and attracted worldwide attention.
Heywood’s reported association with Hakluyt added another layer of intrigue. Hakluyt was no ordinary management consultancy. It had been founded in 1995 by former MI6 officers and built its reputation by supplying discreet intelligence and political insight to major international corporations.
Reports that Heywood occasionally passed information to MI6 were denied in the narrow sense that he was not a formal British intelligence officer. That did not necessarily rule out informal contact or the provision of information.
The Heywood story therefore sits within the shadowy territory where commercial consulting, political access and intelligence gathering can become difficult to distinguish.
But the real relevance for this article is not an unproven theory that Heywood worked for Shell.
It is that the consultancy with which he was associated had extraordinarily close, documented connections with Shell at the highest level.
Hakluyt: founded by intelligence professionals
Hakluyt & Company was founded by former British intelligence officers Christopher James and Mike Reynolds.
Its business model involved gathering information for corporate clients through networks of well-placed contacts. The firm publicly presented its work as strategic intelligence and commercial advice rather than espionage.
That description did not prevent controversy.
In June 2001, The Sunday Times reported that Shell and BP had hired Hakluyt to obtain information about environmental organisations, including Greenpeace. The newspaper described undercover activity conducted by a Hakluyt operative using a false identity.
This was not merely a case of Shell purchasing an occasional report from an outside consultancy.
The relationship reached directly into Shell’s boardroom.
Sir Peter Holmes: Shell chairman and Hakluyt Foundation president
Sir Peter Holmes was one of the most senior figures in Shell’s history.
He had been chairman of Shell Transport and Trading Company and chairman of the Committee of Managing Directors of the former Royal Dutch/Shell Group. After retiring from executive leadership, he remained a director of Shell Transport and Trading.
He also became president of the Hakluyt Foundation.
Company records show that Holmes was appointed a director of the Hakluyt Foundation on 30 September 1997. Shell’s annual reports show that he remained a director of Shell Transport and Trading during the same period.
The Hakluyt Foundation was presented as a supervisory or oversight body associated with Hakluyt’s intelligence activities.
The arrangement therefore produced an extraordinary overlap.
A former Shell chairman, who remained a Shell director, was simultaneously occupying a senior position in the oversight structure of a private intelligence consultancy working for Shell.
That is not conjecture. It is a matter of corporate record.
Sir William Purves: Shell director and Hakluyt chairman
Sir William Purves provides an equally striking example.
Purves, the former chairman of HSBC, was a non-executive director of Shell Transport and Trading Company. He also became chairman, director and shareholder of Hakluyt & Company.
The relevant Shell annual reports and Hakluyt company filings show that these positions overlapped.
Purves was therefore serving as a director of Shell Transport and Trading while also chairing a private intelligence company used by Shell.
My father, Alfred Donovan, and I wrote directly to senior Shell figures during this period about our treatment by Shell, including the use of investigators and undercover activity.
At the time, we had no idea that individuals within Shell’s own governance structure simultaneously occupied senior positions in Hakluyt.
That fact radically changes the context in which our complaints were received.
Complaining about spying to men linked to the spy company
In April 1998, my father wrote to Sir William Purves in his capacity as a senior non-executive director of Shell Transport and Trading.
The correspondence raised serious concerns about Shell’s conduct, the handling of our litigation and whether material information was reaching Shell’s non-executive directors and shareholders.
It was a formal appeal to independent corporate oversight.
We did not know that Purves had a simultaneous connection with Hakluyt.
We also communicated with Sir Peter Holmes without knowing of his senior role in the Hakluyt Foundation.
This was during the same broad period in which Shell admitted using investigators against us.
The resulting situation was extraordinary.
We were complaining to senior Shell figures about surveillance, undercover approaches and investigative activity while those same corporate circles overlapped with a private intelligence consultancy founded and staffed by former intelligence officers.
There is no evidence currently available to me proving that either Holmes or Purves personally ordered surveillance against the Donovans.
Nor is there documentary proof that Hakluyt participated in the Donovan litigation.
Those qualifications must be stated clearly.
But the undisclosed overlap created an obvious conflict of interest and a serious governance problem. People to whom shareholders and litigants might reasonably appeal for independent oversight were connected to the very corporate-intelligence structure that should potentially have been examined.
Christopher Phillips and the false credentials
The Donovan spying allegations are not based solely on suspicion.
In June 1998, a man calling himself Christopher Phillips entered the offices of Don Marketing and obtained information under false pretences.
He presented a business card identifying him as being associated with a supposed company and used a false professional role. The visit was subsequently traced to investigative work undertaken on Shell’s behalf.
Shell’s solicitors, DJ Freeman, admitted in a letter dated 19 June 1998 that Phillips had been acting in connection with enquiries commissioned for Shell.
Shell UK Legal Director Richard Wiseman confirmed the position in writing on 24 June 1998.
Shell maintained that the activity amounted to routine credit enquiries arising from litigation.
That explanation has always appeared inadequate.
A genuine credit enquiry would not ordinarily require a visitor to conceal the identity of his principal, use misleading credentials or enter business premises under a manufactured commercial pretext.
The correspondence also indicated that Phillips was not the only investigator involved. Other unnamed enquiry agents had undertaken work for Shell.
Shell declined to disclose the full instructions given to them.
The police investigation—and what Shell apparently did not disclose
We reported the investigative activity and associated concerns to the police.
Shell stated that it would cooperate with any police investigation.
To my knowledge, Shell did not tell the police that it had a close corporate relationship with Hakluyt or that senior Shell directors occupied positions within Hakluyt and its foundation.
That omission matters.
It does not prove that Hakluyt was involved in the operation against us. However, when a company accused of using covert investigators has a documented relationship with a private intelligence firm founded by former MI6 officers, that relationship is plainly relevant background.
The police could then have decided for themselves whether it required investigation.
Instead, the connection appears never to have been volunteered.
The Simon Rines interview at Shell-Mex House
The spying and intimidation allegations were also investigated by journalist Simon Rines, who was then working with The Guardian.
Rines interviewed senior people connected with Shell, including Richard Wiseman and Colin Joseph of the law firm DJ Freeman. The meeting took place at Shell-Mex House.
Shell recorded the interview. Rines also made his own recording.
To my knowledge, Shell did not disclose during that interview that it had a corporate relationship with Hakluyt or that senior Shell figures simultaneously occupied positions within Hakluyt’s governance structure.
Once again, this does not establish that the individuals participating in the interview personally knew about the relationship.
It is possible that Wiseman, Joseph or others dealing with our case had no knowledge of Hakluyt’s activities.
Large corporations frequently compartmentalise sensitive security work. Lawyers and communications executives may know that an investigation exists without knowing who is ultimately directing it, which contractors are involved or how intelligence is being obtained.
But that possibility creates an even more troubling question:
If Shell’s senior lawyers did not know which intelligence-connected organisations or operatives were working for the company, who did?
Shell and Hakluyt: more than an ordinary client relationship
The company records establish a structure that went well beyond an arms-length customer and supplier arrangement.
During overlapping periods:
- Sir Peter Holmes was a director of Shell Transport and Trading and president of the Hakluyt Foundation.
- Sir William Purves was a director of Shell Transport and Trading and chairman, director and shareholder of Hakluyt & Company.
- Shell was reported to have commissioned Hakluyt intelligence work against environmental campaigners.
- Shell admitted using Christopher Phillips and other unnamed investigators against my father and me.
- We were making complaints about that activity to senior figures without knowing about their Hakluyt connections.
Each fact is significant on its own.
Taken together, they reveal an enclosed network in which Shell directors, private intelligence operatives, investigators, lawyers and establishment figures moved within overlapping professional circles.
The word “incestuous” may sound provocative, but it accurately captures the absence of meaningful distance between the corporation being challenged, the directors supposedly overseeing it and the intelligence organisation serving it.
The OPL 245 wiretap: “the people that we hired from MI6”
Any suggestion that Shell’s association with intelligence professionals was merely historical was demolished by a secretly recorded telephone conversation involving Shell’s two most senior executives.
On 17 February 2016, Dutch investigators intercepted a telephone conversation between Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden and Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry.
The call took place after Dutch financial police raided Shell’s headquarters in The Hague as part of the investigation into the controversial OPL 245 Nigerian oil deal.
During the call, van Beurden discussed Shell’s internal review of old emails.
He referred explicitly to:
“the people that we hired from MI6”
According to the transcript, those individuals had participated in discussions connected with the period when the OPL 245 transaction and associated payment arrangements were being worked out.
Van Beurden described email exchanges involving them as “loose chatter,” “unhelpful” and “stupid.” He referred to remarks speculating about who might receive a payoff.
Simon Henry then asked whether the material came from the period of the Eni payment or from a later internal investigation using people with intelligence backgrounds.
Van Beurden clarified that the emails came from the period when the transaction itself was being structured.
The importance of this exchange is difficult to overstate.
It was not an allegation by an activist, journalist or political opponent. It was Shell’s chief executive speaking privately to Shell’s chief financial officer.
Van Beurden’s words confirm that Shell had hired people from MI6.
They also show that intelligence-connected personnel were involved in one of Shell’s most politically sensitive and legally controversial international transactions.
The recorded conversation is therefore powerful corroboration of the broader pattern.
Shell did not merely have historical or social connections with former intelligence figures through Hakluyt. Shell directly employed people from the intelligence world when dealing with commercially sensitive operations.
What the OPL 245 recording does—and does not—prove
The OPL 245 conversation does not prove that the MI6-connected individuals mentioned in 2016 had any relationship with Hakluyt.
It does not prove that the same people were involved in the Donovan affair.
It does not establish that every former intelligence officer hired by Shell acted improperly.
What it does prove is that Shell’s use of intelligence professionals was real, acknowledged at chief-executive level and sufficiently extensive for van Beurden to refer casually to “the people that we hired from MI6.”
That admission makes earlier questions surrounding Shell, Hakluyt and private investigators considerably more serious.
The Hakluyt connection can no longer be dismissed as a peculiar association involving a few retired establishment figures.
It formed part of a wider corporate culture in which former intelligence personnel were regarded as useful commercial assets.
Neil Heywood and the unanswered China question
Against this background, questions about Neil Heywood are legitimate, but they must remain carefully framed.
Heywood reportedly worked for Hakluyt. Hakluyt had a deep and documented relationship with Shell. Shell had substantial commercial interests in China.
That creates a reasonable basis for asking whether Heywood ever undertook work touching on Shell’s interests.
It does not supply the answer.
No document presently available to me establishes that he did.
Shell could resolve the question by stating unequivocally whether Heywood ever provided services directly or indirectly relating to Shell.
Until such clarification is provided, the issue remains an unanswered question—not an established allegation.
A system designed to obscure responsibility
The picture emerging from these events is not necessarily one centrally organised conspiracy in which every participant knew everything.
The reality may be more institutionally revealing.
Shell appears to have operated within an enclosed ecosystem of:
- serving and former directors;
- former MI6 personnel;
- private intelligence consultants;
- enquiry agents;
- lawyers;
- political advisers;
- security departments;
- and outside contractors.
Within such a structure, responsibility becomes fragmented.
One department commissions an enquiry. Another receives the product. Lawyers handle the consequences. Directors remain insulated from operational detail. Contractors protect their sources. Senior executives can plausibly say they were never told precisely how information was obtained.
Deniability becomes a structural feature rather than an explicit instruction.
That may explain why Shell could admit that Christopher Phillips worked on its behalf while refusing to reveal the full brief given to him and the other unnamed agents.
It may also explain how senior lawyers or executives could respond to allegations of surveillance without mentioning Hakluyt.
Perhaps they did not know.
But if that is correct, it would mean intelligence-related activity was taking place for Shell without the knowledge of some of the people publicly responsible for defending the company’s conduct.
That is hardly reassuring.
The central questions Shell has never answered
The surviving documentary record leaves several fundamental questions:
Who authorised the use of Christopher Phillips?
Who were the other unnamed agents acknowledged in Shell’s correspondence?
What instructions were they given?
What information did they collect about Alfred and John Donovan?
Who within Shell received their reports?
Was any intelligence contractor beyond the agents themselves involved?
Were Sir Peter Holmes or Sir William Purves informed about the complaints made to Shell concerning spying and intimidation?
Did either man declare his Hakluyt interests when those complaints arose?
Was Shell’s relationship with Hakluyt disclosed to the police?
Was it disclosed to Simon Rines during his investigation?
Did Neil Heywood ever undertake work relating to Shell?
And how many former intelligence officers has Shell employed or retained across its global operations?
These are questions Shell could have answered decades ago.
Its continuing silence has ensured that they remain alive.
Conclusion: not a smoking gun, but an entire filing cabinet
No single document establishes that Hakluyt directed the operation against the Donovans.
That claim is not being made.
What exists instead is an accumulation of documented facts:
Shell commissioned intelligence work from Hakluyt.
Hakluyt was founded by former MI6 officers.
A former Shell chairman became president of the Hakluyt Foundation while remaining a Shell director.
Another Shell director simultaneously chaired Hakluyt and held shares in the company.
Shell admitted using Christopher Phillips and other unnamed agents against my father and me.
We complained about surveillance and intimidation without being told that senior Shell figures were embedded within Hakluyt’s structure.
Shell apparently did not disclose the relationship to the police or to the journalist investigating our allegations.
Years later, Shell CEO Ben van Beurden was secretly recorded referring explicitly to “the people that we hired from MI6.”
That is not a smoking gun proving one unified operation.
It is arguably something more revealing: an entire filing cabinet showing how closely Shell’s corporate world overlapped with the world of private intelligence.
The individuals, companies and operations may not all have been connected to one another.
But the network itself is no longer deniable.
Shell’s relationship with intelligence professionals was not peripheral.
It was not accidental.
And it was certainly not confined to fiction.
Important evidential qualification
This article distinguishes between documented facts, reasonable questions and unproven possibilities.
There is presently no documentary evidence available to the author proving that Hakluyt participated in investigative activity directed against Alfred or John Donovan. There is likewise no evidence proving that Neil Heywood performed work for Shell.
The documented matters include Shell’s relationship with Hakluyt; the overlapping Shell and Hakluyt positions held by Sir Peter Holmes and Sir William Purves; Shell’s written admission concerning Christopher Phillips and other enquiry agents; and Ben van Beurden’s recorded reference to people Shell had hired from MI6.
Readers should draw their own conclusions from the evidence.
Site wide disclaimer also applies.
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