Posts under ‘Africa’

Bogus Group: Geert Vermeulen (Ethics & Compliance Officer) posted an article on Linkedin about the Shell OPL 45 debacle and all that surrounds it. This was a response to the article by Adam Bennett:

Geert, very easy to pass judgments without knowing full facts and in hindsight. Having previously led the business integrity department at Shell I can tell you things in Nigeria are never that clear cut. One thing I remain certain of is the moral compass of shells leadership.

Can’t be the same moral compass most of us are certain of. read more

02 JULY 2020

Sergio Spadaro, the Italian deputy prosecutor, on Thursday told a Milan court prosecuting Shell and Eni over the OPL 245/Malabu affair that all parties involved in the deal were corrupt.

He said President Goodluck Jonathan, who led Nigeria from 2010 to 2015, Dan Etete, who allocated OPL 245 to Malabu Oil and Gas — a company in which he had interest as minister of petroleum — in 1998 and Diezani Alison-Madueke, who was minister of petroleum when the oil block was sold to Shell and Eni by Malabu in 2011, all had long-standing relationships. read more

Reuters: 2 July 2020

MILAN (Reuters) – Oil majors Eni <ENI.MI> and Royal Dutch Shell <RDSa.L> were aware that most of the money they spent to buy a Nigerian oilfield in 2011 would go in corrupt payments to politicians and officials, a prosecutor said on Thursday.

“They were kickbacks. And Eni and Shell knew it,” Sergio Spadaro told judges in Milan, summing up the prosecutors’ case in what is one of the industry’s largest corruption scandals ever.

Italy’s Eni and Shell, who deny any wrongdoing, bought the OPL 245 offshore field in 2011 for about $1.3 billion from Malabu, a company owned by former Nigerian oil minister Dan Etete. read more

Bank supervisor Johnson Banigo avoids wearing light-colored shirts to his job because they’re ruined by the dark soot that falls from the heavens.

Banigo, 34, lives and works in Port Harcourt, the center of Nigeria’s petroleum industry where the evening sky literally glows with gas flares. Half a century of oil spills has left a 27,000 square-mile region of swamps, creeks and mangrove forests in southeastern Nigeria one of the most polluted places on earth. Life expectancy is just 41 years. read more

ABUJA, June 23 (Reuters) – Britain’s Supreme Court heard an appeal on Tuesday from Nigerian farmers and fishermen seeking to pursue claims against oil major Royal Dutch Shell over spills in the Niger Delta.

The appeal re-opens the possibility of British multinationals being held liable at home for their subsidiaries’ actions abroad. It comes after a setback in 2018 when a London court ruled that the claims could not be pursued in England.

A judgement is expected later this year or in early 2021, a court spokeswoman said. read more

Nigerians Bid to Sue Shell in U.K. Over Oil-Spill Pollution

Photo source

By William Clowes and Laura Hurst: 23 June 2020, 05:00 BST

• Residents want to use 2019 ruling to access U.K. courts
• Shell says compensation lawsuit should take place in Nigeria

Thousands of Nigerians are asking British judges to give them permission to sue Royal Dutch Shell Plc in London over environmental damage caused by oil spills 3,000 miles away in Africa.

Lawyers for residents of the crude-rich Niger Delta believe a landmark U.K. Supreme Court ruling last year against a London-based miner should set a precedent. Shell, which has blocked the suit twice from entering British courts, says the litigation should be heard in the West African country. read more

By John Donovan

I wonder if the American Ballet Theatre is aware of the sinister background of its new benefactor, Hakluyt & Co – the corporate intelligence agency sometimes described as the commercial offshoot of MI6.

Titled Shell directors, the late Sir Peter Holmes, and Sir William Purves, were also directors, major shareholders and spymasters of Hakluyt & Company, a UK corporate espionage firm founded by former senior MI6 officers. BP directors were also involved. 

Shell used Hakluyt to engage in cloak and dagger operations against its perceived enemies, including Greenpeace, as exposed in a Sunday Times front-page lead article “MI6 ‘firm’ spied on green groups”. Continuing on to an inside page feature headlined “How agent Camus sunk Greenpeace oil protests”.  read more

More than 40,000 Nigerians from the Ogale and Bille Communities in the Niger Delta will take their legal fight against Shell to the UK Supreme Court on Tuesday, June 23, 2020.

The case will be heard via video link and will be live-streamed online. The hearing is listed for one day. The communities argue in their legal case that they have been severely affected by years of oil spills from oil pipelines owned and operated by Shell. read more

Only 11% of contaminated sites have even seen clean-up operations begin

Thousands of Ogoni people still facing serious health risks, some unable to access safe drinking water

Supreme Court to hear case next week brought by affected Niger Delta communities 

‘The discovery of oil in Ogoniland has brought huge suffering for its people’ – Osai Ojigho 

Nearly ten years after the UN called for a major clean-up of areas of the Niger Delta polluted by the oil giant Shell and other oil companies, decontamination work has begun on only 11% of planned sites while vast areas remain heavily contaminated, according to a new investigation by four NGOs published today. read more

By Ikechukwu Nnochiri, Abuja: 17 JUNE 2020

The Federal Government, on Wednesday, re-arraigned the immediate past Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke, SAN, on an amended seven-count money laundering charge.

Adoke took fresh plea before trial Justice Inyang Ekwo alongside his co-defendant, Aliyu Abubakar, who is an oil tycoon.

In the charge marked FHC/CR/89/2017, FG alleged that Adoke had in September 2013, accepted the sum of United States Dollars equivalent to N300million from the 2nd Defendant, Abubakar, and thereby committed an offence under section 1 (a) of the Money Laundering Prohibition Act 2011 (as amended) and punishable under section 16 (2)(b) of the same Act. read more

14 JUNE 2020

As oil prices tumble and the world heads into a COVID-19-induced recession, Nigeria needs every naira that it can recover from looted assets that are hidden abroad.

It was never going to be easy getting Nigeria’s money back. The forces lined up against justice for the victims of corruption are mighty, and if they are to be countered, it demands nothing less than the full commitment of the Ministry of Justice to a coherent, well-funded, transparent asset recovery programme. read more

EXCLUSIVE: Malabu Scandal: Nigeria grounds Dan Etete’s $57million jet in Canada

Nigeria has tracked down and grounded the luxury private jet purchased by its former oil minister, Dan Etete, with some of the alleged proceeds of the notorious $1.3 billion Malabu OPL245 oil deal.

Asset recovery lawyers acting for the Nigerian government swooped last week after the Bombardier 6000 jet, tail number M-MYNA, touched down at Montréal-Trudeau International Airport in Canada on Friday evening (29 May). read more

“Shell extracts a lot of oil and gas from Nigerian soil, and that is associated with pollution, sabotage, tax lawsuits, protests from the local population and suspected corruption.”

English translation of a Dutch article by nrc.nl

Dutch ambassador leaked information to Shell

Nigeria Robert Petri, the Dutch ambassador to Nigeria, had been in post for less than a year and a half. He did not have a good relationship with his staff. And above all: wasn’t he too close to Shell?

Prime Minister Mark Rutte (l) and Shell chairman Ben van Beurden (r) visiting President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, autumn 2019. Photo Bart Maat / ANP read more

English translation of an article published by nrc.nl

OPL 245: Shell was tipped off in advance about a pending visit to Nigeria by officers from a Dutch criminal investigative agency “about an extensive corruption investigation into Shell the oil company itself.”

Ambassador leaked to Shell

• Merijn Rengers
• Carola Houtekamer

3 juni 2020 om 22:54

Nigeria In 2017, the Dutch ambassador to Nigeria shared confidential information about a visit from the FIOD with the local Shell director.

At the end of 2017, the Dutch ambassador to Nigeria leaked confidential information about an extensive corruption investigation into Shell to the oil company itself. This was revealed in an integrity investigation into Robert Petri, who was prematurely replaced as ambassador to the Nigerian capital Abuja in early 2019. read more

The ambassador warned Shell that it was under investigation over bribery allegations. (OPL 245)

By Janene Pieters on June 4, 2020 – 09:34

In 2017 the Dutch ambassador to Nigeria, Robert Petri, leaked confidential information about an extensive corruption investigation into Shell to the oil company itself, NRC reports based on information revealed in an integrity investigation into Petri. The ambassador warned Shell that it was under investigation over bribery allegations.

Petri was prematurely replaced as ambassador to the Nigerian capital of Abuja in early 2019 and brought back to the Netherlands. According to NRC, this happened after an integrity investigation into Petri at the end of 2018, and a subsequent investigation into the working climate at the Dutch embassy in Nigeria early in 2019. read more

June 2, 2020

On 23 June, the Supreme Court will consider whether Shell can arguably be held liable for pollution caused by its Nigerian subsidiary, which destroyed farming land, wiped out fish stocks and poisoned drinking water. In 2018 the Court of Appeal ruled that Shell did not exercise enough control over the subsidiary to hold it responsible for the well-being of those affected by the oil spills.

This is the latest stage in a four-year legal action brought by communities seeking compensation for the catastrophic environmental damage caused by widespread oil spills. read more