Shell’s attempt to kill damaging US litigation involving senior managers in Shell Corporate Security, including Spymaster James W.D. Hall

By John Donovan

I have provided links (1) (2) to the latest legal submissions (including a motion to dismiss) made by Shell in defence of a discrimination claim by Mr Walied Shater.

He is the third senior member of Shell Corporate Security who has sued Shell Oil Company alleging discrimination by the head of Shell Corporate Security, Mr James W.D. Hall.  read more

Shell gripe website sucked into US litigation between warring Shell global security spymasters

By John Donovan

Our article – “Spectacular falling out of ‘Security Professionals’ at the top of Shell” – is reprinted on several pages of a recently filed 177-page “Exhibit A” in an astonishing lawsuit involving the head of Shell Global Corporate Affairs Security, James W.D. Hall.

Mr Hall has faced a succession of accusers, starting with the Security Manager for Shell Oil Company, Crockett Oaks III. Shell settled his claim. Mr Mike Oliveri, another guy with a senior military/security affairs background also sued Shell on related allegations involving Mr Hall. Mr Oliveri is a decorated war veteran, a Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve. Mr Hall’s current accuser is Mr Walied Shater a former US Secret Service agent. read more

By John Donovan

Last Sunday I was described in the Channel 4 TV documentary Joe Lycett vs The Oil Giant as Shell’s No1 Enemy and as Shell’s nightmare. (Transcript of the relevant segment)

Within days I seem to have lost both titles to a billionaire upstart, Daniel Loeb, who seems intent on breaking up Shell.

From my unique perspective on Shell senior management over recent decades, he is right to question competence and direction.

How has Shell ended up with a foe (me) operating a website using the top-level domain name royaldutchshellplc.com and as a consequence dealing on Shell’s behalf with job applications and all manner of other email correspondence meant for Shell? This is the humiliating situation Shell has been in since 2005. Evidently, no one at Shell has had the gumption to do anything to put an end to such a farce. read more

Image Credit: KICKBACK NEWS

By John Donovan

KickBack.news, the anti-corruption website recently founded by Javier Ferrandis has published a remarkable article under the headline:

DONOVAN vs. SHELL: A 30 Years Epic battle against a corporate giant.

Extract

Disgruntled employees, interested in learning about or airing the dirty laundry of the Shell Group, or journalists, who want to find out what’s up at one of the largest corporations in the world, know that you have to start your search by simply typing royaldutchshellplc.com on your browser. read more

Damaging leak involving Shell VP James WD Hall, until recently Head of Shell Global Security

CONTENT OF AN EMAIL SENT 8 SEPT 2021 BY JOHN DONOVAN TO DONNY CHING, LEGAL DIRECTOR OF ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC

Dear Mr Ching

Printed below is a draft article about a pressing global issue as it relates to Shell. 

Please let me know by 7 pm UK time today if you challenge the authenticity of the extracts from source Shell internal comms, including a related attachment circulated at the highest levels of Royal Dutch Shell Plc on 1st Sept 2021.  read more

THE WEBSITE WHERE SHELL’S “INTERNAL LAUNDRY” HANGS OUT ONLINE

The above-embedded image is from a Shell CONFIDENTIAL internal email involving Shell lawyers and Shell Corporate Affairs Security (CAS). It was obtained in response to a John Donovan SAR application under the UK Data Protection Act 1998 and provides irrefutable evidence of Shell secretly spying on its own employees on a global basis. The names of those involved in the spying project were all redacted by Shell lawyers.

For more information, Google “Reuters report Shell critic says oil major targeting his website” read more

Extracts below relating to Shell and Hakluyt from a SPUTNIK article by Kit Klarenberg: 27 Sept 2019 (SPUTNIK IS A RUSSIAN OWNED PUBLISHER)

In 1995, private intelligence agency Hakluyt & Company was established. Its ranks were filled with former members of British foreign intelligence agency MI6 – including Fitzroy Maclean, upon which Ian Fleming modelled James Bond – and also oil industry executives. William Purves, CEO of Shell Transport, was chair 2000 – 2008, Peter Holmes, former Shell chair served as the agency’s president, and Peter Cazalet, former BP deputy chair, helped set up Hakluyt before he retired in 2000. read more

Use your browser to enlarge image

By John Donovan

I have published several articles over the years naming many Shell senior security people. They include the MI6 hires referred to by Royal Dutch Shell CEO Ben van Beurden in a wiretapped telephone conversation relating to the OPL 245 corruption case. 

Some of their names have come up in leaked emails that have recently appeared on the Internet. I have combined the various emails into a single document.

The email participants include a former senior British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) officer, Ian Forbes McCredie who until December 2010, was VP Corporate Affairs Security, Shell International B.V.  Mr McCredie is closely associated with the private spy firm Hakluyt sometimes described as the commercial offshoot of MI6. When I sent an email to Mr McCredie at Shell, I received an automated response giving me his Hakluyt email address. read more

The screenshot Information about James W.D. Hall, Head of Royal Dutch Shell Global Corporate Security was downloaded on 11 June 2019 and assumed to be correct and current at that time. He is in charge of over 250 Shell security supervisory staff worldwide. Is he yet another Shell MI6 hire, as per his predecessor, Ian Forbes McCredie? The selection of authentic high-level Shell internal emails below provides some indication of the character and ethics of senior Shell executives and Shell’s hired spooks. More court exhibits will be added on a regular basis until further notice.  

U.S. Court Case 4:17-cv-01970

SOURCE

Related article: Spectacular falling out of ‘Security Professionals’ at the top of Shell

Extract from the 80-page legal complaint (recommended read to understand why Shell could not let the case go to trial)

Mr. Hall’s own e-mails and statements clearly prove that he violated Section 3.4 of Shell’s Code of Conduct, which states, in relevant part, that “[w]hen making employment decisions, including hiring, evaluation, promotion, training, development, discipline, compensation and termination, you must base them solely on objective factors, including merit, qualifications, performance and business considerations. . . . [Y]ou should understand the value of diversity and must not discriminate in any way based on race, colour, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, disability, ethnic origin or nationality.” read more

Printed below is a translation of an article published this weekend by the Dutch broadcaster NRC. It is about the Shell internal communications and documents relating to the OPL 245 Nigerian oil deal corruption case seized during a raid carried out by the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) at Shell HQ in the Hague in 2016. In a controversial move, Shell lawyers are resorting to legal machinations to frustrate the progress of the Dutch proceedings. On this occasion by claiming legal privilege and secrecy over the seized evidence. Criminal proceedings relating to the same massively corrupt oil deal are moving forward quickly in Italy (but at a snail’s pace in the Netherlands, Shell’s home country). A related tapped telephone conversation involving Shell CEO Ben van Beurden when he ordered that no documents should be volunteered to the investigators carrying out the raid can be heard here. Undisputably, another Shell cover-up tactic. So much for Shell’s claimed business principles from a company that seems to employ more MI6 people than MI6. Listen to the taped call. 

Dutch corruption case against Shell is, according to lawyers, inevitably delayed

Professional secrecy

Call for OM to simplify procedures related to non-disclosure law encounters astonishment among lawyers and scientists

By our editors Carola Houtekamer and Merijn Rengers: Amsterdam.

Shell and the Public Prosecution Service were honest about it on Thursday. Yes, they clash over the internal Shell documents that were seized by the FIOD investigation service at the head office in The Hague during the beginning of 2016. They deal with the corruption case involving OPL245, a mega-oil field off the coast of Nigeria. read more

Esther Kiobel and John Donovan, 28 April 2019, days before a Dutch court ruled in favour of Esther and her co-plaintiffs in an action against Shell allowing their case to proceed

By John Donovan

In 1996, Shell used the sinister specialist services of what could be described as an in-house spying resource set up by former MI6 officers, Hakluyt & Company Limited with titled Shell directors acting as the ultimate spymasters.

At that time, Sir William Purves was Chairman of Hakluyt & Company Limited and Sir Peter Holmes, a former Chairman of Shell, was President of the Hakluyt Foundation. Both were also major shareholders in the corporate spy outfit, while also being Shell directors.

Hakluyt was allegedly set up to carry out “deniable” corporate espionage operations.

A German-born secret service agent Manfred Schlickenrieder working undercover for Hakluyt was sent to Nigeria on a mission relating to allegations of environmental damage caused by Shell’s oil drilling in Ogoniland.

Extracts from a related front-page article published by The Sunday Times in 2001 under the headline MI6 ‘Firm’ Spied on Green Groups:

Schlickenrieder sometimes posed as a left-wing sympathizer and documentary filmmaker.

He also tried to dupe Anita Roddick’s Body Shop group to pass on information about its opposition to Shell drilling for oil in a Nigerian tribal land.

His company was a one-man band with a video camera making rarely seen documentaries.

He made a film on Shell in Nigeria called Business as Usual: the Arrogance of Power, during which he interviewed friends of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Nobel prize nominee, who was hanged by the military regime in 1995 after leading a campaign against oil exploration. Schlickenrieder sent a letter to a Body Shop executive saying he had been researching the activities of Shell in Nigeria…

Fouad Hamdan, communications director of Greenpeace Germany, said: “The bastard was good, I have to admit. “He got information about our planned Atlantic Frontier campaign…”  He added: “Manfred filmed and interviewed all the time…”

The Sunday Times article is short on dates and information about what Shell’s undercover agent was up to in Nigeria, but it was at a time when litigation was being contemplated against Shell by relatives of Ken Saro Wiwi and Ogoni Nine widows.

Perhaps information about the purpose and timing of his spying mission in Nigeria will be contained in the confidential Shell internal documents the Dutch Court has ordered to be handed over to Esther Kiobel and her co-plaintiffs. Sight of his briefing by Shell/Hakluyt could be very revealing.

Part of the Kiobel & Co Dutch case against Shell relates to alleged Shell bribing of witnesses in the Ogoni Nine trial, which ended with the hanging of all nine individuals, including Ken Saro-Wiwi and the beloved husband of Esther Kiobel, Dr Barinem Kiobel.

Salient extracts from the Wikipedia article “Ogoni Nine”

The executions provoked international condemnation and led to the increasing treatment of Nigeria as a pariah state…

At least two witnesses who testified that Saro-Wiwa was involved in the murders of the Ogoni elders later recanted, stating that they had been bribed with money and offers of jobs with Shell to give false testimony – in the presence of Shell’s lawyer.

Shell’s close association with former MI6 people has continued through the years. They always seem to be lurking in the shadows.

I am in possession of irrefutable evidence that an ex MI6 man Ian Forbes McCredie,  hired by Shell to be head of Shell Global Security, was also part of Hakluyt & Company.

More recently, Ben van Beurden, the current Chief Executive of Royal Dutch Shell Plc mentioned in a telephone conversation that Shell had hired former MI6 people in connection with the OPL 245 oil deal. He did not know that the conversation was being covertly recorded by OPL 245 investigative authorities.

Two of the defendants in the current OPL 245 criminal $1.3bn  corruption trial against Shell in Italy are indeed former MI6 agents; namely John Copleston and Guy Colegate.

Would someone kindly explain how any of this sinister and unscrupulous activity is compatible with Shell’s claimed core business principles, including honesty, integrity and transparency?

ARTICLE ENDS

Disclosure by the author of this article: The lead claimant Esther Kiobel, her lawyer Channa Samkalden of the Dutch human rights law firm Prakken d’Oliveira representing the widows, and the acclaimed human rights organisation Amnesty International, have all acknowledged the involvement of John Donovan in bringing *this case. (*See Writ of Summons in English and Dutch served on Shell 28 June 2017 – copy obtained from US Pacer public electronic court records) As Esther generously said on 28 April 2019, the Dutch case would not have happened without the help of John Donovan.  read more

By John Donovan

Shell internal email correspondence relating to the OPL 245 oil deal has been very revealing and may seal the fate of defendants in the Italian trial, including the former MI6 people hired by Shell. Their names, Guy Colgate and John Copleston, appeared on the emails. read more

Oaks refused to countenance a policy of illegal discrimination insisted upon by his boss James W.D. Hall, Vice President of Corporate Security, located at Royal Dutch Shell plc’s Global Headquarters in the Netherlands. Hall, a mysterious British Citizen, is the alleged Mr Nasty in this matter. He is described in the Complaint as “the top executive in Shell’s entire Corporate Security Organization…”

Doc 1- Michael Oliveri Complaint against Shell Oil Company dated 27 June 2017. 72 pages with lots of revealing high-level Shell internal emails as exhibits.

Court Order on Oliveri Case 15 Jan 2019

By John Donovan

Former FBI Special Agent Crockett Oaks III joined Shell in 2003 and until two years ago was paid over $325,000 per year as head of Shell Security in the Americas. He has a military background currently holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.

Oaks was for some time involved in Shell’s murky Nigerian operations as Shell Head of Business Integrity in Nigeria. A little matter called OPL 245, along with other Shell sponsored corruption, was also going on at the time.

He was wrongfully dismissed on an unrelated matter. Oaks refused to countenance a policy of illegal discrimination insisted upon by his boss James W.D. Hall, Vice President of Corporate Security, located at Royal Dutch Shell plc’s Global Headquarters in the Netherlands.

Hall, a mysterious British Citizen, is the alleged Mr Nasty in this matter. He is described in the Complaint as “the top executive in Shell’s entire Corporate Security Organization…”

The Complaint states:

Shell had many opportunities to intervene in this matter and correct the illegal and wrongful actions of James W.D. Hall, that were in violation of Shell’s Code of Conduct and the laws of the United States. Instead, Shell leadership at the highest levels of the Company chose to rally behind the discriminatory actions of Mr. Hall, and erect a facade designed to try to cover up Mr. Hall’s illegal discrimination.

Crockett Oaks III was accused of allegedly hiding a Conflict of Interest by hiring a friend, Mike Oliveri – another senior officer from the same U.S. Army Reserve Unit. Oaks supplied copious evidence proving the allegation was unfounded.

The heated dispute ended up in the U.S. courts. (The link to my article 12 April 2017 from which part of the above text is taken.

I published a further article on 17 August 2017

Extracts

The falling out was over the hiring of another recruit to Shell’s corporate security Mike Oliveri, another guy with a senior military/security affairs background.

Shell picked on the wrong guys to upset, Crockett Oaks III and Mike Oliveri.

Crockett Oaks III sued Shell for a “systemic pattern and practice of intended discrimination at Shell and its parent company, Royal Dutch Shell plc”.  Basically, discrimination and retaliation.

He had the goods on Shell, which quickly settled for big bucks. The secret details, juicy quotes and revealing Shell internal emails were sealed into a confidentiality agreement. Fortunately, I have an excellent US source.

Now Mike Oliveri is suing Shell on pretty much the same grounds, perhaps salivating at the prospect of a similar big bucks settlement to buy his silence. He knows all about Shell’s wrong-headed support for James W.D. Hall despite the blatant disregard by Mr Hall of Shell’s claimed business principles and his underhanded retaliation against Oaks and Oliveri when they stood up against his ill-treatment of them.

The Court Order issued a few days ago dismisses Shell’s attempt to seek a Summary Judgment rejecting the claim of alleged discrimination.

“For the foregoing reasons, the court concludes that there is a genuine issue of material fact such that a reasonable jury could find the actions taken by Shell against the Plaintiff constituted discrimination…”

Although Michael Oliveri’s battle against Shell continues, the back history is so embarrassing for Shell that it is unlikely Shell will want the witnesses and related toxic testimony and evidence paraded in open court.

Shell is therefore likely to settle out-of-court with Mr Oliveri as it wisely did with Mr Crockett Oaks III and with me on several occasions.

CURRENT/FORMER SHELL PEOPLE INVOLVED IN THE CASE, AS INDICATED IN COURT DOCS

Bruce Culpepper, Shell’s then US Country Chairman and Shell Oil Company President

James W.D. Hall, Vice President of Corporate Security, located at Royal Dutch Shell plc’s Global Headquarters in the Netherlands. read more

By John Donovan

Shell is a major investor in Putin’s Russia, which uses revenues from hydrocarbon sales to finance illegal and immoral wars against Ukraine and Syria. Not to mention the murder of Russian and UK citizens using outlawed radioactive and chemical weapons.

Shell’s main business partner in Russia is Gazprom, whose board is filled with former KGB and other questionable characters.

Shell is partnering with Gazprom on Sakhalin 2, the Nordstream II pipeline and the Baltic LNG project. read more

I have already listed the various kinds of Shell insider information we receive. It has included confidential internal documents from a high-level source in Shell Global Security. Another email seen by Reuters, apparently from a Shell communications representative to U.S. news network Fox News said: “royaldutchshellplc.com is an excellent source of group news and comment and I recommend it far above what our own group internal comms puts out”.

Extracts from the ebook “John Donovan, Shell’s Nightmare” (now available on Amazon websites globally)

Extracts from pages 165 to 168 inclusive

By John Donovan

Shell cloak and dagger activities against me have continued in more recent years, but this time on a global basis, as revealed in a Reuters article (extract above). The most recent spying of which I am aware was directed at me, my website and against Shell’s own employees.

I have already listed the various kinds of Shell insider information we receive. It has included confidential internal documents from a high-level source in Shell Global Security.

We discovered that the continued campaigning on our part triggered another bout of sinister activity by Shell, this time targeting my website, myself and Shell employees. read more

Despite all that happened, Shell did not disclose to the Police, or to me, its close association with Hakluyt. An organisation skilled in the intelligence gathering tactics that had been directed against us, which were, as indicated, used against other parties also perceived to be enemies of Shell.

Extract from the ebook “John Donovan, Shell’s Nightmare” (now available on Amazon websites globally)

(BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT SHELL’S EPIC 25 YEAR FEUD WITH JOHN DONOVAN – which puts the extracts below in overall context.)

The extract below should be read in the context of the fact that we were besieged by undercover activity during the run-up to the SMART High Court Trial – the climax of our litigation alleging that Shell had stolen Intellectual Property from our company Don Marketing. Shell brought a Counterclaim amid a barrage of aggressive threats and sinister activity directed against us. Shell did not disclose its close connection with a private spy firm Hakluyt & Company.

Extracts below from pages 106 & 107

HAKLUYT & COMPANY

Hakluyt is a corporate intelligence company based in London founded by former senior officers of the British Secret Service, in close association with titled Shell directors. read more