Shell has tried to shed its image of corporate killer like a snake would its skin.

Dear Shell: After 25 Years, Are You Finally Ready to Accept Your Role in the Murder of Ogoni 9?

The Ogoni 9 — Ken Saro-Wiwa, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine — were murdered 25 years ago for their campaign against Shell. Photo by Martin LeSanto-Smith.

And so another grim, painful milestone is reached. It is now a quarter of a century since the Ogoni 9 were murdered in Nigeria. read more

By John Donovan

In the recent article (below”) about the OPL 245 corruption scandal, published under the translated headline “Eni-Nigeria trial, Prosecutor requests 8 Years sentence for Descalzi,” reference is made to “an axis of spies that runs through this story.”

It mentions the involvement of Shell’s MI6 hires responsible for generating the incriminating emails found in the raid and search of Shell’s HQ that has done so much damage to Shell’s reputation. read more

Translation of an article published overnight by the Dutch media organisation nrc.nl

High prison sentences demanded against former Shell employees

Lawsuit In a criminal case for alleged corruption by Shell and Eni when purchasing a Nigerian oil field, the Public Prosecution Service demands high penalties.

Merijn Rengers and Carola Houtekamer: July 21, 2020 at 22:22

The Italian Public Prosecution Service demanded unprecedented high prison sentences in Milan on Tuesday against four former Shell directors and employees for large-scale corruption. The prosecution charges it to a former member of the board of directors, a director and two advisers who participated in bribery in Nigeria. The amount of the kickback, more than $ 1 billion, makes this one of the largest corruption affairs a Dutch company has ever been involved in. read more

Translation of an article published overnight by the Dutch news media organisation, nrc.nl

Of course, Shell knew about the corruption risk, the prosecutor said

Lawsuit over oil field In a dim Milanese bunker, Tuesday was worked towards the denouement in the corruption case against oil companies Shell and Eni. Prosecutor Fabio De Pasquale calls it “the perfect economic crime.”

Carola Houtekamer: July 21, 2020

The lawsuit revolves around the acquisition of rights to the oil field “OPL 245”, for which Shell and Eni paid $ 1.3 billion. Photo George Osodi / Getty 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

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.  

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

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