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For Immediate Release
March, 30 2016, 03:45pm EDT
Contact:
Oliver Courtney, Communications Manager
ocourtney@globalwitness.org
+44 (0)7912 517147
Barnaby Pace, Oil Campaigner
bpace@globalwitness.org
Shell's Headquarters Raided and Formal Investigation Launched over Billion Dollar Nigerian Oil Deal
Royal Dutch Shell, the world's second largest oil company, has been put under formal investigation by the Milan Public Prosecutor's office for "international corruption" offences relating to a deal for oil block OPL 245 in Nigeria, according to reports in the Italian press this morning.
Royal Dutch Shell, the world's second largest oil company, has been put under formal investigation by the Milan Public Prosecutor's office for "international corruption" offences relating to a deal for oil block OPL 245 in Nigeria, according to reports in the Italian press this morning.
The headquarters of the Anglo-Dutch company in The Hague were, according to Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera, raided on the 17th of February by 50 officers from the Italian financial police and their Dutch colleagues, with the raid lasting through the night. The Dutch home of former Nigerian Attorney General Mohammed Bello Adoke was also searched.
Global Witness, together with Nigerian activist Dotun Oloko and anti-corruption campaigners at Re:Common and Corner House have been investigating the OPL 245 deal for several years. In June 2015 they filed a complaint with the Milan Public Prosecutor giving evidence of Shell's role in the deal. Today's development presents a real threat to Shell's shareholders who could see the value of their investment disappear, and the company's reputation damaged as a result of any conviction for complicity in dodgy dealings.
"Shell and Eni have always denied knowledge of the corruption at the heart of this deal, but evidence we have published shows otherwise. The news of an investigation into Shell shows that their role played in this deal may backfire on them. Shell and Eni exposed their investors to massive risks and have been tainted by this theft from Nigerian citizens." said Simon Taylor, a Director of Global Witness
A Global Witness investigation exposed that when OPL 245 was sold in 1998 for US$20m - a fraction of its value now - it went to Malabu Oil & Gas, a company secretly owned by the then Oil Minister, Dan Etete. The block was then passed on to Shell and Eni in 2011, with the Nigerian government acting as middleman, for US$1.1bn. This sum is equivalent to 80% of the country's 2015 health budget, but it never reached state coffers.
Shell and Eni have always denied that they knew the money would ultimately go to Etete, despite evidence from Global Witness showing otherwise.
The Nigerian House of Representatives in 2014 called for the deal to be cancelled and declared it "contrary to the laws of Nigeria".
"The age of accountability is dawning with this news. Fueling corruption in Nigeria through shady deals like that for OPL 245 will now have consequences," said Dotun Oloko, a Nigerian anti-corruption campaigner.
Eni has already been formally put under investigation by the office of the Public Prosecutor of Milan which has named Dan Etete, Eni and its current and former CEOs as suspects. The UK's Proceeds of Corruption Unit within the Metropolitan Police began investigating money laundering connected to the case in June 2013 under "Operation Zaphod", however the investigation was discontinued in 2015 due to lack of further evidence becoming available from Nigeria at the time. US authorities also participated in tracing funds connected to the deal. US$190m paid by Shell and Eni for OPL 245 has been frozen in accounts belonging to Etete and middlemen in the UK and Switzerland.
"This is very significant, the British authorities now have questions to answer about why they dropped their side of the investigation and failed to restrain funds when we originally asked them to, which allowed US$110m to leave the UK until it was restrained in Switzerland." said Nicholas Hildyard of Corner House.
Antonio Tricarico of Re:Common said "This news comes as a welcome development which has been long overdue since only Eni has been under investigation for this deal in which both Shell and Eni took equal part. It is vital that any companies and individuals involved are held accountable for this corrupt deal."
In a statement sent to journalists today a Shell spokesperson said "We can confirm that representatives of the Dutch Financial Intelligence and Investigation Service (FIOD) and the Dutch Public Prosecutor recently visited Shell at its headquarters in The Hague. The visit was related to OPL 245, an offshore block in Nigeria that was the subject of a series of long-standing disputes with the Federal Government of Nigeria. Shell is cooperating with the authorities and is looking into the allegations, which it takes seriously.
Shell attaches the greatest importance to business integrity. It's one of our core values and is a central tenet of the Business Principles that govern the way we do business. All employees are expected to uphold these principles and failure to do so will result in consequences up to and including dismissal."
Shell has insisted that they did not pay Malabu and in a response to a request for comment from Global Witness in April 2015 said "We do not agree with the premise behind various public statements made by Global Witness about Shell companies in relation to OPL 245".
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Sanders Says US Complicity in Gaza 'Must End' Ahead of Senate Vote to Block Arms to Israel
"The United States government is currently in violation of the law, and every member of the U.S. Senate who believes in the rule of law should vote for these resolutions," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
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A group of U.S. senators led by Bernie Sanders of Vermont held a press conference Tuesday urging their colleagues to support resolutions that would block the sale of tank rounds, bomb kits, and other weaponry to the Israeli government, which has repeatedly used such arms to commit horrific war crimes in the Gaza Strip over the past 13 months.
"The truth of the matter is, from a legal perspective, these resolutions are not complicated; they're cut and dry," said Sanders (I-Vt.), who introduced the joint resolutions of disapproval last month alongside several other members of the Senate Democratic caucus.
"The United States government is currently in violation of the law, and every member of the U.S. Senate who believes in the rule of law should vote for these resolutions," Sanders continued, pointing to U.S. statutes prohibiting the sale of weaponry to countries violating internationally recognized human rights or obstructing American humanitarian aid.
Sanders was joined at Tuesday's press conference by Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), each of whom made their case to fellow senators ahead of a scheduled floor vote on Wednesday.
"What's unfolding before our very eyes right now is mass starvation and the spread of disease," said Welch. "Is the United States and its foreign policy... forced to be blind to the suffering before our very eyes?"
Surrounding the senators as they spoke were photographs of destruction and emaciated children in Gaza, where most of the population is displaced and crowded into small segments of the enclave as Israeli bombs rain down and famine takes hold.
Watch the full press conference:
The resolutions will hit the floor for a vote Wednesday with the backing of a broad coalition that includes Jewish Voice for Peace Action, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, J Street, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Oxfam, and other organizations and activists.
"For over a year, the Biden administration has funded the Israeli government's brutal genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, despite overwhelming opposition from across the country," said Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, which said it has driven more than 56,200 letters and more than 20,790 phone calls to senators imploring them to support the measures.
"These joint resolutions of disapproval are one of the last chances that Senate Democrats have before Republicans take control in January to uphold human rights, honor the will of the American people, and stand on the right side of history by blocking weapons to the Israeli military," Miller added.
"It is time to tell the Netanyahu government that they cannot use U.S. taxpayer dollars and American weapons in violation of U.S. and international law, and in violation of our moral values."
Since the October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, the U.S. has supplied its ally with more than 50,000 tons of weaponry and approved billions of dollars in additional arms and military equipment to be delivered in years to come. U.S. military support has helped Israel carry out a large-scale military assault on Gaza, killing more than 43,000 people so far—a majority of them women and children.
To sustain the flow of American weapons, the Biden administration has contradicted the findings of its own experts and outside analysts by declaring publicly that it has not found Israel to be illegally blocking U.S. humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, aid groups on the ground say humanitarian assistance has plummeted to an all-time low in recent weeks, with an average of just 37 aid trucks entering Gaza per day in October.
During Tuesday's press conference, Sanders said the "most important point to be made" ahead of Wednesday's vote is that "the United States of America is complicit in these atrocities."
"That complicity must end, and that is what these resolutions are about," said Sanders. "It is time to tell the Netanyahu government that they cannot use U.S. taxpayer dollars and American weapons in violation of U.S. and international law, and in violation of our moral values."
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Putin Shifts Nuclear Posture as Ukraine Fires Long-Range Missiles into Russia
The "window to avert catastrophic miscalculation is now that much narrower," warned one expert after Biden lifted restrictions on U.S.-supplied weapons.
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Fresh fears of escalation were expressed Tuesday after Ukraine struck territory deep inside of Russia using long-range missiles for the first time within hours of the Kremlin announcing changes to its nuclear weapons posture.
In the pre-dawn hours, Ukraine reportedlyused U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles to attack an ammunition depot in the Bryansk region of Russia, located less than 200 miles north of a small strip of Russian territory currently held by Ukraine thanks to an incursion mounted in summer 2024. Russian forces are working to push back Ukrainian forces in the area.
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that there was an attack. "At 3:25 a.m. this morning the enemy struck a site on the territory of the Bryansk Region with six ballistic missiles. According to confirmed data, US-made ATACMS tactical missiles were used. As a result of an anti-missile battle, five missiles were shot down and one was damaged by crews of S-400 and Pantsir missile defense systems," the ministry said in statement, according to the Russian government-run news agency TASS.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia would respond "accordingly."
The attack comes on the 1,000th day of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine that began in 2022, and mere days after President Joe Biden green lit Ukraine's use of these specific weapons – in what The New York Times characterized as a "major shift of American foreign policy" and one foreign policy expert called a "needlessly escalatory step."
Ukraine President Vlodomyr Zelenskyy has long sought permission from the U.S. government to use Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, according to the Financial Times. Zelenskyy has also asked for the lifting of restrictions on other long-range weapons provided by NATO countries – including Storm Shadow missiles from the United Kingdom. The U.S. began supplying the Lockheed Martin-produced ATACMS earlier this year, according to Defense One, but imposed restrictions on their use due to the escalatory implications of Ukraine using them to strike targets far inside Russian territory.
Also on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree implementing changes to the country's nuclear doctrine that lower the threshold for potential nuclear weapons use.
Under the updated doctrine, "aggression against the Russian Federation and (or) its allies by any nonnuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state is considered as their joint attack," according to the The New York Times.
"The big picture is that Russia is lowering the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a possible conventional attack," Alexander Graef, a senior researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, toldReuters.
"Russia's new nuclear doctrine means NATO missiles fired against our country could be deemed an attack by the bloc on Russia. Russia could retaliate with WMD against Kiev and key NATO facilities, wherever they're located. That means World War III," wrote former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on X early Tuesday.
U.S. intelligence analysts have also concluded that granting Ukraine the ability to use U.S., French and U.K.-supplied long-range missiles could prompt forceful retaliation by Russia, but that the move would likely not fundamentally alter the course of the war.
Mark Episkopos, a Eurasia research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, warned Monday that use of such weapons by the Ukraine military would likely not impact the battlefield advantages of either side in the immediate term but puts "Russia and NATO one step closer to a direct confrontation."
"With such weapons now in play," added Episkopos, "the window to avert catastrophic miscalculation is now that much narrower."
Meanwhile, in a Tuesday statement on X, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), said it was "dangerously complacent" for Western politicians and pundits to dismiss Putin's shift as some kind of bluff.
"We can’t know if Putin—or any leader of a nuclear-armed country—will use nuclear weapons at any time," argued ICAN. "No matter the size of a nuclear weapon any use would escalate rapidly into a nuclear war devastating the world. The stakes are simply too high to assume Putin is bluffing."
ICAN, the 2017 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, said that the "way to prevent nuclear weapons from ever being used again is to eliminate them, and treaties like the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons are here for that."
The Biden administration's rollback of restrictions comes after thousands of North Korean troops have joined the Russian military effort, and as President-elect Donald Trump's January inauguration approaches. Trump has said he will seek a swift end to the war and criticized the amount of aid the United States has provided Ukraine.
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Tens of Thousands March for Indigenous Rights at New Zealand Parliament
The Māori Party co-leader called Parliament's consideration of a bill that would reinterpret a key treaty "the deepest betrayal that we've ever had from a National government."
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An estimated 55,000 people marched outside New Zealand's Parliament in Wellington on Tuesday to protest legislation that critics argue would dilute Indigenous rights by reinterpreting a treaty signed in 1840 by the British Crown and more than 500 Māori chiefs.
The peaceful demonstration was the culmination of a nine-day march, or hīkoi, that began at Cape Reinga, the northernmost point of New Zealand and the most spiritually significant place in the country for Māori, who are about 20% of the 5.3 million-person population.
Reutersreported that some "dressed in traditional attire with feathered headgear and cloaks and carried traditional Māori weapons, while others wore T-shirts emblazoned with Toitu te Tiriti (Honor the Treaty). Hundreds carried the Māori national flag."
"We have gathered in our tens of thousands, not just Māori, but others who support an inclusive, diverse, equal partnership that our country has been a world leader in pioneering."
The Treaty Principles Bill targeting the Treaty of Waitangi, or Te Tiriti o Waitangi, is being pushed by the ACT New Zealand party, a junior partner in the center-right coalition government, which also includes the National Party and New Zealand First (NZF).
Although the National and NZF have said that they are only supporting the legislation for the first of the three readings—meaning it is highly unlikely to pass—Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, co-leader of the Māori Party, or Te Pāti Māori, told the podcastThe Front Page that even allowing it to be tabled is a "deep shame."
"We deserve better than to be used as political pawns," Ngarewa-Packer argued. "The fact that National has decided that we were tradeable and the mana of the coalition agreement was so much more important than the mana of Te Tiriti and tāngata is the deepest betrayal that we've ever had from a National government."
Pointing to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who won earlier this month after being ousted in the previous cycle, Ngarewa-Packer added, "We're a country that had the first women's vote, we have always punched above our weight in the anti-nuclear space, the anti-discrimination space, and here we are in 2024 with the sort of Trump-like culture coming into our politics."
The New York Timesnoted Tuesday that "a year before American voters' anger over the cost of living helped Donald J. Trump win the presidency, similar sentiments in New Zealand thrust in the nation's most conservative government in decades. Now, New Zealand bears little resemblance to the country recently led by Jacinda Ardern, whose brand of compassionate, progressive politics made her a global symbol of anti-Trump liberalism."
As the newspaper detailed:
The new government—a coalition of the main center-right party and two smaller, more populist ones—has reversed many of Ms. Ardern's policies. It has rescinded a world-leading ban on smoking for future generations, repealed rules designed to address climate change, and put a former arms industry lobbyist in charge of overhauling the nation's strict gun laws.
And in a country that has been celebrated for elevating the status of Māori, its Indigenous people, it has challenged their rights and the prominence of their culture and language in public life, driving a wedge into New Zealand society and setting off waves of protests.
Parliament was briefly suspended last Thursday after Maori members staged a traditional dance called a haka to disrupt the first reading. The haka—which garnered global attention—was started by Member of Parliament Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who tore up a copy of the bill.
Speaking to the Wellington crowd on Tuesday, Maipi-Clarke—who at 22 is the country's youngest MP—said, "We are the sovereign people of this land and the world is watching us here, not because of the system, not because of the rules, but because we haka."
Other participants in the Tuesday action included the Māori Queen, Ngā Wai Hono i te Pō, and Te Pāti Māori Co-Leader Rawiri Waititi, who led the crowd in a chant to "kill the bill."
According toThe Northern Advocate, ACT Leader David Seymour, "the architect of the Treaty Principles Bill, was booed back inside the Beehive today by the tens of thousands protesting against his controversial bill."
While Seymour has framed the bill as an effort to end division and ensure equal rights for all, critics like Ella Henry, professor of Māori Entrepreneurship at Auckland University of Technology, warn that it is an effort to roll back New Zealand's previous progress in terms of relations with Indigenous people.
"So we have gathered in our tens of thousands, not just Māori, but others who support an inclusive, diverse, equal partnership that our country has been a world leader in pioneering," Henry toldSBS News. "Those are the people who are marching."
Hayley Komene, who is from the Ngāti Kauwhata tribe, similarly toldThe Guardian that there was a "real strength and pride" at the march, and "there are people from lots of different backgrounds here for the same reason—it's beautiful."
Komene also slammed the government's Māori policies as "absolutely ridiculous" and stressed that "Te Tiriti is a constitutional document of our country."
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