English translation of an article published by the Dutch news media giant nrc.nl 

A suitcase full of secrets about oil, sex and bribery by Shell

• Merijn Rengers
• Carola Houtekamer
• 13 Jan 2020

Shell in Nigeria A dubious game took place around Africa’s most coveted oil field. New, secret documents from a confiscated suitcase tell how Shell tried to avoid reputational damage.

Former oil minister Dan Etete (r) was the owner of the oil field, but also infected after a conviction for money laundering. Photo Gindl Barbara / AFP

What’s the news?

The Italian prosecutor suspects that the former chief executive of Shell in Nigeria has benefited from the controversial purchase by Shell of the mega-oil field OPL 245 off the Nigerian coast. This is Sunmonu Mutiu, who led the Nigerian division of the Anglo-Dutch oil company. read more

Extracts from NIGERIA Africa Energy Intelligence article dated 07/01/2020

As an Italian court continues its probe into the award of Nigeria’s most promising offshore block, all those involved in the deal at Shell are no longer with the major.

These include the head of upstream at the time Malcolm Brinded, former general counsel Keith Ruddock and legal advisor for Africa Guus Klusener.

Shell’s political advisor and ex-MI6 John Copleston, who met with Etete on several occasions to discuss the OPL 245 deal in 2010, has left…

Another former MI6 agent, Guy Colegate, who had advised Shell during the OPL 245 talks from Nigeria, left to work for Heritage Oil in 2013… 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

Hakluyt is known as a retirement home for ex-MI6 officers…

Hakluyt (now Holdingham Group Ltd) a private MI6 outfit, that met with …

Hakluyt, a UK-US corporate intelligence arm and offshoot to MI6

Created by former MI6 British Secret Service agents, Hakluyt is an ultra secretive firm whose client list reads like a who’s who of the business world…

The ensuing scandal catapulted Hakluyt to mainstream notoriety, and led several MPs to accuse MI6 of using the firm as a front for its own operations. read more

Shell’s Bribe Scandal: Article published by TEMPO newspaper, 2 Jan 1996 (Page 13)

Shell’s Bribe Scandal

Although for the past two months, Shell has been denying its involvement in the politics of the NIger Delta, through numerous press releases and briefing notes, all these were shattered last week, with the stories published in the British press about Shell’s complicity with the Nigerian military authorities. This is the story of how Shell paid millions of dollars in bribes and kickback to tribal chiefs, community leaders and the military in the troubled Ogoni region. 

It made headline news in most of the British newspapers last week. “SHELL BRIBED NIGERIA’s MILITARY screamed the Independent of London newspaper.

SHELL AXES CORRUPT Nigerian staff read the Sunday Times of London report written by its INSIGHT team. At the centre of the story is how Shell, the exploiter of Nigeria’s crude oil paid handsome amounts of money running into several hundreds of millions of Naira to top military officers in Nigeria to wast vocal environmentalists like Ken Saro-Wiwa and to help establish stability in its oil business by employing ruthless military operations. 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

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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

Shell wanted exclusive access to the Chinese market and the Chinese wanted their own large oil and gas concessions in the Middle East. Shell had an exclusive 75 years old concession in the United Arab Emirates, which was about to expire on January 2014. What did the Emirati royalty want in order to facilitate this large oilfield concession changing hands? The answer is money, a massive bribe. This is where Oscar Wyatt’s company, Coastal Energy Resources came into the picture.

By John Donovan

A whistleblower who held a senior finance position inside Royal Dutch Shell has made serious allegations relating to the 1MDB scandal, which he claims is the tip of the iceberg of something way bigger and even more sinister. He also claims to have received death threats on numerous occasions since he left Shell.

His decade long employment record with Shell appears to be 100% authentic.

What is the Malaysian 1MDB scandal?

The 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal or 1MDB scandal is an ongoing political scandal occurring in Malaysia. In 2015, Malaysia’s then-Prime Minister Najib Razak was accused of channelling over RM 2.67 billion (nearly USD 700 million) from 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a government-run strategic development company, to his personal bank accounts. (Extract from related Wikipedia article.) 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.  

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

It appears, according to court documents, at the request of ‘Royal Dutch Shell plc’ and four suspected former Shell employees who are mentioned by name and by name in the Italian summons. These are two former British secret agents, hired by Shell as oil men whose main task was to make the inscrutable Nigerian policy more transparent. And two senior Shell managers: former board member Malcolm Brinded and former Africa director Peter Robinson. The foursome is said to have been closely involved in preparing the bribes payments…: “He is a former head of the British secret service MI6, but really no more than a junior employee at Shell in Nigeria.

…in the Netherlands, the FIOD invaded the head office in 2016 and a criminal case for corruption seems imminent. 

Translation of an article published today by the Dutch broadcaster NRC Handelsblad.

“By Nigerian standards, this was a great oil deal”

Shell lawsuit: After months of waiting, Shell took the floor on Tuesday in the court case about possible bribery at the unexplored Nigerian oil field OPL245.

By Merijn Rengers, Carola Wood Room, June 4, 2019

Room 7, where the largest corruption case in Dutch company history is fought, is bursting at the seams. It is warm and noisy and the available seats are already set aside early in the morning for at least 25 Italian lawyers, their crowd of assistants and prosecutors. The other listeners – Shell representatives, activists, interested parties – are forced to sit and sit in the back, or cage in two paying cells on either side of the courtroom where normally detained suspects await their verdict. read more

Runar Kjørsvik was the chief safety officer at the Shell Nyhamna Gas facility until he was fired. Bjørn Tore Røshol took over the office. Both struggle with the psychological after-effects of a culture of fear at the facility. Their stories are quite similar. 

English translation of an article published by Stavanger Aftenblad on 11 May 2019.

Shell safety delegates ended up in a psychiatric ward. They tried to clean up Shell. They ended up with psychiatric chaos in their heads.

Foreign Skarsaune: JOURNALIST
Jon Ingemundsen: PHOTOGRAPH UPDATED: PUBLISHED: 11 MAY 2019 07:41

In the corner of the waiting room are two men. The chair between them is empty. It is quiet at the psychiatric outpatient clinic in Molde.

Bjørn Tore Røshol, left, and Runar Kjørsvik is sitting in the waiting room at the district psychiatric center in Molde. Photo: JON INGEMUNDSEN

They go here regularly. That they have hour at the same time this day is random. But that they are here, they think is not random. Both have been the main safety delegate at Shell’s gas facility at Nyhamna outside Molde. Both struggle with psychological after-effects. Their stories are quite similar: 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 communications obtained from Shell under the UK Data Protection Act 1998 provide proof of Shell’s intent to “kill” news coverage of John Donovan and his website, royaldutchshellplc.com.

Please read this Shell internal email about a half page news article written by then Sunday Times journalist Steven Swinford. It clearly indicates Shell’s intent to “kill” the article.

The article was about my intervention in the Sakhalin 2 project, which cost Shell its majority stake in the venture. Although the entire article was read to me over the phone by Steven Swinford hours before it was due to be published, it never appeared. read more

Shell’s CEO Ben van Beurden bows to Russian Leader Putin: Good Friday, 18 April 2014

Yesterday the Dutch newspaper Financieele Dagblad published a truly devastating article Shell gas leaks, fires and accidents about Shell playing fast and loose with the health and lives of its employees. Today there is mass coverage of the outrage over the £17m pay package awarded to Shell CEO Ben van Beurden. The revulsion also has to be seen against the damaging litigation engulfing the energy giant, including OPL 245 corruption charges and a related raid on Shell HQ involving BvB and his then CFO, Simon Henry. Both were embarrassed by a wiretapped conversation between them discussing obstructing the investigation and the revelation by BvB that Shell had hired hapless former MI6 “people” who had been cavalier with Shell’s OPL 245 secrets. Why is Shell rewarding such behaviour, which is completely at odds with Shell’s claimed business principles?  

Shell chief’s pay doubles to 143 times average UK employee’s

The chief executive of oil-company Shell saw his pay more than double last year to more than €20m (£17m). Ben van Beurden’s total salary in 2017, which was approximately €9m, prompted a shareholder revolt. The raise comes as the company increased its annual profits by almost $10bn and is largely down to long-term incentives kicking in. Dutchman Mr van Beurden’s pay is now 143 times larger than the average Shell employee in the UK. 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