Deranged Rhino Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 This is going to shake some cages. Who would have thought oil and gas companies, or giant companies with unchecked power and wealth in general, would be so shady? Oh, that's right. Everyone: A massive leak of confidential documents has for the first time exposed the true extent of corruption within the oil industry, implicating dozens of leading companies, bureaucrats and politicians in a sophisticated global web of bribery and graft. After a six-month investigation across two continents, Fairfax Media and The Huffington Post can reveal that billions of dollars of government contracts were awarded as the direct result of bribes paid on behalf of firms including British icon Rolls-Royce, US giant Halliburton, Australia’s Leighton Holdings and Korean heavyweights Samsung and Hyundai. The investigation centres on a Monaco company called Unaoil, run by the jet-setting Ahsani clan. Following a coded ad in a French newspaper, a series of clandestine meetings and midnight phone calls led to our reporters obtaining hundreds of thousands of the Ahsanis’ leaked emails and documents. The trove reveals how they rub shoulders with royalty, party in style, mock anti-corruption agencies and operate a secret network of fixers and middlemen throughout the world’s oil producing nations. Corruption in oil production - one of the world's richest industries and one that touches us all through our reliance on petrol - fuels inequality, robs people of their basic needs and causes social unrest in some of the world's poorest countries. It was among the factors that prompted the Arab Spring. (much more at the link) http://www.theage.com.au/interactive/2016/the-bribe-factory/day-1/the-company-that-bribed-the-world.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deranged Rhino Posted March 30, 2016 Author Share Posted March 30, 2016 More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/unaoil-bribery-scandal-corruption_us_56fa2b06e4b014d3fe2408b9?utm_hp_ref=australia Most people remember that the Arab Spring started with a guy who lit himself on fire. What they don’t remember is that he did it as a protest against corruption: Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit vendor, decided he’d been shaken down by police officers one too many times. Bouazizi’s death set in motion the biggest political upheaval of the 21st century. The Arab Spring was “mostly about corruption,” said FBI Special Agent George McEachern, one of the leading investigators of global graft. “Corruption leads to failed states, which leads to terrorism.” That’s what makes the corruption revealed in a new trove of confidential emails from a mysterious Monaco-based company called Unaoil so significant. On Wednesday, The Huffington Post and its Australian partner, Fairfax Media — led by reporters Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie — published the results of a months-long investigation of Unaoil, an obscure firm that helps big multinational corporations win contracts in areas of the world where corruption is common. Hundreds of major international corporations — including Halliburton, its former subsidiary KBR, Rolls-Royce and Samsung — counted on Unaoil to secure lucrative contracts in Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and other countries in Africa, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union, tens of thousands of internal emails and documents reveal. It’s common for large multinational corporations to partner with smaller firms with local expertise to win contracts. But in many cases, Unaoil wasn’t winning contracts because of its expertise — it was winning them by paying millions of dollars in bribes to corrupt officials. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiberius Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Must have been a nice racket to reap the benefits from! Thomas Dewey, the GOP presidential candidate in 1948, was back in the 1930's a prosecutor in NYC. The mob and thugs had such a hold on commerce in the city that the rackets put on 20% mark up on almost everything sold in the city from milk to tires. Dewey busted hundreds of them using tactics that bordered on the unconstitutional. No wonder we have Rico laws. Crooks took advantage of the lack of federal power to squeeze so many honest citizens. Looks like the lack of international law does the same in the global economy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deranged Rhino Posted March 31, 2016 Author Share Posted March 31, 2016 This is shaping up to be the beginning of a massive story. Of course, no one is paying attention (because, LOOK OVER THERE! TRUMP!)... FBI, DoJ, and anti-corruption agencies in UK and Austrialia investigating widespread corruption: The news comes as Fairfax Media and The Huffington Post can reveal that US giant Halliburton and its former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root are embroiled in the Unaoil bribes-for-contracts scandal through their operations in former Soviet states. The biggest leak of confidential files in the history of the oil industry also unveils rampant corruption inside Italian oil giant Eni in many of the countries in which the firm has been contracted by national governments to manage their oilfields. (snip) The leaked Unaoil files show that in the Middle East Unaoil bribed two Iraq oil ministers, Iranian oil chiefs and the right hand man of Colonel Gaddafi’s son, among others. Questions are emerging about how Unaoil operated for so many years with impunity, using bank accounts in New York and London to launder funds and pay bribes between 2000 and 2012, possibly more recently. http://www.theage.com.au/interactive/2016/the-bribe-factory/day-2/global-investigation.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deranged Rhino Posted March 31, 2016 Author Share Posted March 31, 2016 (edited) More articles. Broadcast media still silent (CNN, Fox, MSNBC, Broadcast -- no one reporting on this. Wonder why...). Until the moment Fairfax Media and The Huffington Post hit the publish button at 10pm on Wednesday, AEDT, revealing how the oil industry really works, our investigative team was on tenterhooks. This was more than simple pre-publication nerves, the questions we invariably ask ourselves about whether we have got it right, and what we had missed in the hundreds of thousands of documents we'd read over the previous months. No, our concern was more specific: that an Australian court, an unsympathetic judge, might stop us publishing this global story. It would have left The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers with seven blank pages each, and thousands of words of crucial information unable to be published online. It may have meant a story that Fairfax Media's reporters had worked on solidly for months would be broken overseas by our collaborator, The Huffington Post, not by the reporters who sourced, corroborated, combed and read hundreds of thousands of emails. This was no idle concern. The day before publication, Unaoil had sent a threatening legal letter reserving their right to seek an injunction in Australia's courts. Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/how-bribe-factory-unaoil-tried-to-stop-us-telling-their-secrets-20160331-gnutfc.html#ixzz44VPC5uxP Here's a list of all the companies involved thus far, it's a staggering list of influence and power: http://www.theage.com.au/interactive/2016/the-bribe-factory/players/players.html Edited March 31, 2016 by Deranged Rhino Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deranged Rhino Posted March 31, 2016 Author Share Posted March 31, 2016 More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/nick-mckenzie/how-i-exposed-a-corporate-bribery-scandal-involving-the-biggest-names-in-the-oil-business_b_9560476.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GG Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 More articles. Broadcast media still silent (CNN, Fox, MSNBC, Broadcast -- no one reporting on this. Wonder why...). .... Just a hunch - maybe because few American companies were involved in this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
/dev/null Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 Just a hunch - maybe because few American companies were involved in this? but but but Haliburton! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GG Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 but but but Haliburton! You forgot to squawk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deranged Rhino Posted March 31, 2016 Author Share Posted March 31, 2016 Just a hunch - maybe because few American companies were involved in this? That's not why. And there are quite a few American companies. There's even a Clinton Foundation tie in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GG Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 That's not why. And there are quite a few American companies. There's even a Clinton Foundation tie in. I don't know what's worse - this scandal or the fact that you're surprised that oil ministers in banana republics demand bribes for lucrative contracts. Of course there are mentions of US companies in the report, and I bet if you throw a wide enough net, you'll find a link to Tim Horton's or Andersen's Custard. To me this ranks on the same serious scale as the outrage that western companies hire children of Chinese bigwigs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deranged Rhino Posted March 31, 2016 Author Share Posted March 31, 2016 I don't know what's worse - this scandal or the fact that you're surprised that oil ministers in banana republics demand bribes for lucrative contracts. Of course there are mentions of US companies in the report, and I bet if you throw a wide enough net, you'll find a link to Tim Horton's or Andersen's Custard. To me this ranks on the same serious scale as the outrage that western companies hire children of Chinese bigwigs. You're completely misrepresenting the findings of this investigation. The assumption has always been that banana republics demand bribes, what this reporting is showing is that's not true. It's corporate influences, illegally manipulating bids that's leading to unrest in the major hot spots in the world. They're working hand in hand with corporate giants and western governments to undercut free market principles. This has been known for awhile, but now there's literally thousands and thousands of pages of proof. This is a much bigger story than you're grasping. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiberius Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 You forgot to squawk. but this is against the law. The corrupt foreign practices act was passed to prosecute these things. Do you think this should be ignored? Ignore the law? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GG Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 You're completely misrepresenting the findings of this investigation. The assumption has always been that banana republics demand bribes, what this reporting is showing is that's not true. It's corporate influences, illegally manipulating bids that's leading to unrest in the major hot spots in the world. They're working hand in hand with corporate giants and western governments to undercut free market principles. This has been known for awhile, but now there's literally thousands and thousands of pages of proof. This is a much bigger story than you're grasping. Other than using big fonts, fancy colors and buzz phrases where is the meat on this big story? but this is against the law. The corrupt foreign practices act was passed to prosecute these things. Do you think this should be ignored? Ignore the law? That's the point. The US anti-corruption act is very powerful and that's why you don't see US companies engaged in these kinds of things. The penalties are too severe. But I'm sure a US company would come up in any investigation given the nature of the industry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiberius Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 Other than using big fonts, fancy colors and buzz phrases where is the meat on this big story? That's the point. The US anti-corruption act is very powerful and that's why you don't see US companies engaged in these kinds of things. The penalties are too severe. But I'm sure a US company would come up in any investigation given the nature of the industry. good point Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deranged Rhino Posted March 31, 2016 Author Share Posted March 31, 2016 Other than using big fonts, fancy colors and buzz phrases where is the meat on this big story? That's the point. The US anti-corruption act is very powerful and that's why you don't see US companies engaged in these kinds of things. The penalties are too severe. But I'm sure a US company would come up in any investigation given the nature of the industry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC Tom Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 but this is against the law. The corrupt foreign practices act was passed to prosecute these things. Do you think this should be ignored? Ignore the law? Not without holding a press conference to announce you're not enforcing it, of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GG Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 Then point to the smoking gun about an American company in that article. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deranged Rhino Posted March 31, 2016 Author Share Posted March 31, 2016 Then point to the smoking gun about an American company in that article. Haliburton, Honeywell, FMC Technologies, Weatherford, Core Labs, Cameron Drilling -- and that's just in less than two days of the story breaking and less than one day of the FBI and DoJ opening their investigations... but those don't count, right? But for clarity my laughter was over your naivety claiming that American companies aren't active participants in corruption because they're scared of the law. They make the law. They own the law makers and the media. You're living in a fairy tale if you actually believe what you wrote. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TakeYouToTasker Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 Tin pot dictators of failed states requiring direct monetary incentive be paid to them in order that they allow their nations resources be extracted. Tell me why I should care? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts