UNAOIL: THE COMPANY THAT BRIBED THE WORLD

[seemslikeadream]

UNAOIL: THE COMPANY THAT BRIBED THE WORLD
In the list of the world's great companies, Unaoil is nowhere to be seen. But for the best part of the past two decades, the family business from Monaco has systematically corrupted the global oil industry, distributing many millions of dollars worth of bribes on behalf of corporate behemoths including Samsung, Rolls-Royce, Halliburton and Australia's own Leighton Holdings.

Now a vast cache of leaked emails and documents has confirmed what many suspected about the oil industry, and has laid bare the activities of the world's super-bagman as it has bought off officials and rigged contracts around the world.

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.

Fairfax Media and The Huffington Post today reveal how Unaoil carved up portions of the Middle East oil industry for the benefit of Western companies between 2002 and 2012.

In part two we will turn to the impoverished former Russian states to reveal the extent of misbehaviour by multinational companies including Halliburton. We will conclude the three-part investigation by showing how corrupt practices have extended deep into Asia and Africa.

The leaked files reveal that some people in these firms believed they were hiring a genuine lobbyist, and others who knew or suspected they were funding bribery simply turned a blind eye.
The leaked files expose as corrupt two Iraqi oil ministers, a fixer linked to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, senior officials from Libya’s Gaddafi regime, Iranian oil figures, powerful officials in the United Arab Emirates and a Kuwaiti operator known as “the big cheese”.

Western firms involved in Unaoil’s Middle East operation include some of the world’s wealthiest and most respected companies: Rolls-Royce and Petrofac from Britain; US companies FMC Technologies, Cameron and Weatherford; Italian giants Eni and Saipem; German companies MAN Turbo (now know as MAN Diesal & Turbo) and Siemens; Dutch firm SBM Offshore; and Indian giant Larsen & Toubro. They also show the offshore arm of Australian company Leighton Holdings was involved in serious, calculated corruption.

The leaked files reveal that some people in these firms believed they were hiring a genuine lobbyist, and others who knew or suspected they were funding bribery simply turned a blind eye.

But some knew much more. A handful of senior insiders at firms such as Spanish company Tecnicas Reunidas, French firm Technip and drilling giant MI-SWACO, not only actively supported bribery but pocketed their own kickbacks; US defence giant Honeywell and Australia’s Leighton Offshore agreed to hide bribes inside fraudulent contracts in Iraq; a Rolls-Royce manager negotiated a monthly kickback for leaking information from inside the British firm.

Many of those revealed to have been culpable, including the wealthy Ahsani family itself, which runs Unaoil, continue to operate with impunity.

The files expose the betrayal of ordinary people in the Middle East. After Saddam Hussein was toppled, the US declared Iraq’s oil would be managed to benefit the Iraqi people. Today, in part one of the ‘Global Bribe Factory’ expose, that claim is demolished.

THE BRIBE FACTORY
It is the Monaco company that almost perfected the art of corruption.

It is called Unaoil and it is run by members of the Ahsani family - Monaco millionaires who rub shoulders with princes, sheikhs and Europe's and America’s elite business crowd. At the head are family patriarch Ata Ahsani and his two dashing sons, Cyrus and Saman. Their charities support the arts and children, and Ahsani family members sit on the boards of NGOs with ex-politicians and billionaires. Ten years ago, a spreadsheet showed they had cash, shares and property worth 190 million euros. They are members of the global elite.

Left to right: Saman, Cyrus and Ata Ahsani
How they make their money is simple. Oil-rich countries often suffer poor governance and high levels of corruption. Unaoil’s business plan is to play on the fears of large Western companies that they cannot win contracts without its help.

The multi-million dollar fees Unaoil takes from its clients are funnelled into an industrial scale bribery operation which further entrenches corruption among the powerful few.
Its operatives then bribe officials in oil-producing nations to help these clients win government-funded projects. The corrupt officials might rig a tender committee. Or leak inside information. Or ensure a contract is awarded without a competitive tender.

If you believe Ata Ahsani, it’s all above board: “We are not in the business of fixing jobs for people. Our work is basically very basic. What we do is integrate Western technology with local capability,” he told Fairfax Media and The Huffington Post.

Did Unaoil bribe public officials? “The answer is absolutely no”.

But the evidence of their own internal email cache, leaked to Fairfax Media and The Huffington Post, clearly demonstrates that the multi-million dollar fees Unaoil takes from its clients are funnelled into an industrial scale bribery operation which further entrenches corruption among the powerful few.

Bankers in New York and London have facilitated Unaoil’s money laundering, while the Ahsanis have built a major property investment business in central London. Since 2007, Unaoil has been certified by anti-corruption agency Trace International. This in itself raises serious questions about the worth of such international accreditation.

But for the Western companies confronted with questions under anti foreign bribery laws in their own jurisdictions, Unaoil appears to be a reputable and discrete middle-man, giving listed businesses what is known as “plausible deniability”.

Companies approached by Fairfax Media and The Huffington Post about their contracts with Unaoil have emphasised they have strong anti-corruption policies, and are committed to investigating their dealings with Unaoil.

IRAQ
Unaoil paid at least $25 million in bribes via middlemen to secure the support of powerful officials — while complaining internally that they were “assholes, and greedy”
After the US led coalition won the second gulf war, it went to guard the oil ministry - leaving the Baghdad museum undefended to be looted of its treasures.

But they did not save the oil industry from thieves. The Unaoil files reveal that Western companies, in concert with Iraq’s new elite, themselves began a sustained campaign of looting.

Unaoil paid at least $25 million in bribes via middlemen to secure the support of powerful officials - while complaining internally that they were “assholes, and greedy”.

Between 2004 and 2012, Unaoil corruptly influenced a Who’s Who of the country’s oil industry: the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq turned education minister Hussain al-Shahristani; Oil Minister Abdul Kareem Luaibi (who was replaced in 2014); the Director General of the South Oil Company, Dhia Jaffar al-Mousawi, who in 2015 became a deputy minister; and top oil official Oday al-Quraishi.

Iraq
The bad old days of corruption were meant to be overPLAY VIDEO

The most senior politicians received multi-million dollar lump sums, while those lower down the food chain were paid lesser amounts. Quraishi, who oversaw Iraq’s most important oil industry expansion project, pocketed a monthly kickback of $US6000 – “$5K for him, and $1k he needs for presents to people within” – along with additional large pay-offs.

The minister, Dr Shahristani, who is now Iraq’s education minister, denied he had been involved in any wrongdoing. Other Iraqi officials did not respond to requests to comment.

Unaoil also bribed senior insiders working for the international oil companies which were contracted by Iraq to manage its oil fields. The leaked files reveal rampant corruption inside Italian oil giant Eni, which ran the tender processes for contractors working on the giant Zubair oil field.

Unaoil’s clients in Iraq included British giant Rolls-Royce, US firms FMC Technologies and Cameron, Italy’s Saipem, German company MAN Turbo, the US listed Weatherford, Dutch company SBM Offshore and Australia’s Leighton Offshore.

IRAN
Everything works and progresses on connections, relations with special talent”. So wrote an Iranian fixer, part of Unaoil’s remarkable network of insiders dedicated to paying and pocketing bribes. After the recent relaxing of United Nations, US and European sanctions, this network has become even more valuable.

In 2006, this Unaoil operative complained in emails that one of the company’s clients, UK firm Weir Pumps (now owned by US firm SPX), owed him hundreds of thousands of dollars which he had promised to use in part to sling to others in Iran.

“[It] is the end of Iranian new year here, expectations high, I am short in cash, and about five million pounds of business with Weir [is] in danger… Because I can not fulfill my obligations to my team of Supporters.”

If the money was not forthcoming, he warned, Weir Pumps risked “melting like a piece of ice, day by day.”

“…over half a million dollars of my consultancy fee… I have already spend it for the promotion of their businesses in Iran.”

A separate set of leaked memos from 2006 said Unaoil would pay “10 k/month” to secure the support of the managing director of a firm chaired by a high ranking Iranian official, part owned by an Iranian government entity and overseen by a board with “political influence.”

“MD [managing director]… wants $10k/month. AA [Ata Ahsani of Unaoil] agree to this given his excellent connections.”

Unaoil’s Iranian network – which was also used to assist firms such as ABB, Elliott and Japan’s Yokogawa – extends beyond the oil industry. In 2011, Unaoil helped solve a dispute involving one of its Australian clients by reaching out to “several influential contacts… including the head of the Iranian Police”.

Prior to the recent easing of sanctions, Unaoil used strategies including front companies to avoid the scrutiny of Western officials. It advised its corrupt fixers to not wire funds using US dollars and to use companies “not having the name Iran in it”.

LIBYA
“ … what type of Baksheesh is needed to present to these men in order to get work”
In 2004, when the West began removing sanctions against Libya, and the regime of Colonel Gaddafi started dealing with foreign companies, Unaoil stood ready.

By 2011, its network of corrupt insiders included officials and front men able to influence the dealings of many of Libya’s most important oil and gas agencies.

In late 2008, a Canadian drilling firm, Canuck Completions, told Unaoil it was “curious about … what type of Baksheesh is needed to present to these men in order to get work” in Libya.

Among Unaoil’s corrupt insiders was the powerful Libyan official, Mustafa Zarti, a confidant for the Gaddafi regime. Unaoil’s files describe Zarti as “good friends of President Ghadafi's [sic] son of Libya and have lot of influence in lobbying the jobs in Libya”. Unaoil agreed to secretly pay Zarti millions of dollars. In return he would use his influence to advantage Unaoil’s clients.

“MZ [Zarti] sits on the board of LFIC [Libyan Foreign Investment Committee] … which controls… Oil fund ($6bn) … He sees his role as us executing and him fixing issues we come across. MZ has agreed to bring all his oil & gas work to us,” a September 2006 Unaoil memo said.

Unaoil’s multinational clients in Libya included Malaysian giant Ranhill, Korean conglomerate ISU and Spanish company Tecnicas Reunidas.

SYRIA
In Syria, Unaoil turned to a middleman close to the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

In 2008 and 2009, Unaoil promised the man 2.75 million euros who helped its British client Petrofac win contracts from Assad regime petroleum companies. “Strictly confidential” emails from 2008 show this middleman promised to pay others to win these contracts.

But when he was not paid on time, he complained the delays were causing problems with “friends” in Syria.

“It is becoming very unpleasant [sic] for me not delivering as expected,” he wrote to Unaoil in December 2009.

Petrofac is understood to be unaware of Unaoil’s involvement in its Syrian dealings and in response to questions said it “aspires to the highest standards of ethical behaviour”.

KUWAIT AND THE UAE
In Kuwait, Unaoil had on its payroll a powerful official who they called “the big cheese.”

To direct a contract to Unaoil’s long term client in the Middle East, US firm FMC Technologies, Unaoil wanted a payment of $2.5 million. It then planned to assign a middleman to handle “the big cheese in Kuwait and to decide what portion… should go to that man”.

In the UAE, Unaoil’s network included a public official with links to the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. The leaked Unaoil files reveal this official had commercial dealings with the Ahsanis who, in return, were seeking the official’s backing in the region. This included an entree to a project funded by the office of “His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed”.

Unaoil corrupted a senior official in a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi’s National Oil company. This insider rigged a tender panel for a Unaoil client, Indian conglomerate Larsen & Toubro.

[seemslikeadream]

UNAOIL: POLICE LAUNCH JOINT GLOBAL INVESTIGATION
A Fairfax Media and the Huffington Post investigation has uncovered an extraordinary story of bribery and corruption in the oil industry, centred on Monaco-based company Unaoil. This is the story of Unaoil's penetration of the former Soviet states.

Nick McKenzie, Richard Baker, Michael Bachelard, Daniel Quinlan
The FBI, US Department of Justice and anti-corruption police in Britain and Australia have launched a joint investigation into revelations of a massive global bribery racket in the oil industry.

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.

Managers from Eni, Spanish Firm Tecnicas Reunidas, French firm Technip, drilling giant MI-SWACO and Rolls-Royce not only actively supported bribery but were offered, or pocketed, their own kickbacks.
Texas firm National Oilwell Varco, Singapore conglomerate Keppel, Norway’s Aker Kvaerner and giant Turkish joint venture GATE are also implicated. Information from hundreds of thousands of emails to Unaoil’s chief executive, Cyrus Ahsani, show individual executives and managers from Halliburton and Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), which split in 2007, knew or suspected that Unaoil was acting corruptly to win contracts in Kazakhstan.

Managers from Eni, Spanish Firm Tecnicas Reunidas, French firm Technip, drilling giant MI-SWACO and Rolls-Royce not only actively supported bribery but were offered, or pocketed, their own kickbacks. And US defence giant Honeywell and Australian firm Leighton Offshore agreed to hide bribes inside fraudulent contracts in Iraq.

Companies approached by Fairfax Media and The Huffington Post about their contracts with Unaoil have emphasised their strong anti-corruption policies and have committed to investigating their dealings with Unaoil. Unaoil also denied any corruption.

THE CASPIAN STATES
To win contracts for its clients in Kazakhstan, Unaoil paid multiple bribes to Eni and Kazakh officials overseeing tenders in the giant Kashagan oilfield and elsewhere.

It appears from the leaked files that senior managers from KBR were pushing Unaoil hard to win favour. One email written from a KBR manager told Unaoil to concentrate its efforts on “a good spaghetti house” and “a little shashlick”. The code refers respectively to the officials from Italian company Eni and the Kazakh government who were overseeing the contracts KBR wanted to win.

The leaked files show Unaoil sought to corrupt a number of influential figures, including senior Eni manager Diego Braghi and Kazakh senior official Serik Burkitbayev, to give its clients an advantage over rival companies.

The formula was repeated in neighbouring Azerbaijan, where KBR also paid Unaoil millions of dollars to help it win contracts. A leaked KBR file said Unaoil’s key middleman in Azerbaijan was "very close to the President and his family ... [and] has an access to every office in the country”.

This middleman, Reza Raein, received millions of dollars from Unaoil in multiple bank accounts. In return, he leaked highly confidential information from senior Azeri government officials to Unaoil, which was fed back to its multinational clients.

Unaoil also sought to build its shady empire in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, including by liaising with a middleman who promised access to “the company of the [Uzbek] President’s daughter, Gulnara Karimova”.


POLICE BEGIN PROBES, FACE QUESTIONS ABOUT PAST FAILINGS
The US Department of Justice, FBI, UK National Crime Agency and Australian Federal Police are now jointly investigating Unaoil and some its multinational clients. The probe is likely to be one of the world’s biggest, given the number of companies and countries involved.

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.

Unaoil has its headquarters in Monaco and is controlled by the wealthy Ahsani family, led by patriarch Ata Ahsani and sons Cyrus and Saman. The trio all have British passports. Many of Unaoil’s crooked deals were organised in London, or used UK and US linked middlemen, bank accounts and shelf companies. British authorities appear to have been in the dark about Unaoil and the Ahsanis, who also operate a London property investment company. The British foreign office has even assisted Unaoil overseas, giving Unaoil and its executives briefings and support.

The Ahsani family meanwhile has mixed freely with Britain and Europe’s elite political and business crowd. Saman Ahsani sits on the board of an Iranian NGO in London alongside former chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont. The Ahsanis host charity events with Prince Albert and Princess Caroline of Monaco, and have paid Prince Albert’s good friend, Mike Powers, to sit on Unaoil’s advisory board.

There is no suggestion that Powers, Lamont or the Monaco royals are aware of Unaoil’s corruption.

But the leaked emails reveal several British businessmen and middlemen, including oil executives Peter Warner, Stuart K Steele, Basil Al Jarah and Leo Bortolazzo, have facilitated Unaoil’s corruption.

[Grizzly]

[seemslikeadream]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-CokQ6z4u8

Business | Fri Apr 1, 2016 7:11pm BST Related: BUSINESS
Monaco raids Unaoil offices over global oil corruption probe
Authorities in Monaco raided the offices of energy services company Unaoil and the homes of its directors after Britain sought help investigating alleged corruption in the global oil industry.

Monaco's government said in a statement on its website that it acted after receiving an urgent request for international judicial assistance in criminal matters from Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO). Unaoil directors were questioned by Monaco police on Tuesday and Wednesday, the government said.

Joint reports by Australia's Fairfax Media and the Huffington Post said that the U.S. Department of Justice and anti-corruption police in Britain and Australia had launched a joint investigation into the activities of Unaoil.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the allegations against Unaoil, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment.

Monaco-based Unaoil provides industrial solutions to the energy sector in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, according to its website.

"Due to recent developments it would be inappropriate for the company to comment at this time," a Unaoil spokesman said in an emailed statement.

The chairman of Unaoil Group, Ata Ahsani, could not be reached for comment.

The media reports, citing hundreds of thousands of emails, also link several multinationals to corrupt practices, including claims of bribery and bid rigging to win oil contracts in countries such as Kazakhstan and Iraq.

Italian oil major Eni (ENI.MI), one of the companies mentioned in the report, indicated that it would hold an internal inquiry into the allegations.

"We do not comment on the results of possible internal investigations," a spokesman for ENI said.

The alleged behaviour of some of its employees was to the detriment of the group and clashed with its code of ethics, the spokesman said.

"None of the people mentioned in the articles are currently employed by Eni," the spokesman said in an emailed response to Reuters about the report.

The media reports said U.S. construction giant KBR Inc (KBR.N), which until 2007 was owned by oilfield services provider Halliburton Co (HAL.N), paid Unaoil millions of dollars from 2004 until at least 2009.

KBR said it does not tolerate illegal or unethical practices and is committed to complying with all applicable laws.

"We take any allegations of corruption and unethical business practices seriously," KBR said in a statement.

Halliburton declined to comment.

A spokesman for Britain's SFO said it was "aware of the allegations," but would not comment further.

Agencies in Australia were aware of allegations of the involvement of a number of Australian companies in foreign bribery matters, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

The AFP said it was conducting ongoing investigations into a number of allegations, but declined to comment specifically on the focus of its probes.

WorleyParsons (WOR.AX) and Primary Health Care (PRY.AX), both named in the media reports, denied any relationship with Unaoil.

Australia's opposition party leader Bill Shorten said he will push for a senate inquiry into global bribery when parliament resumes this month. He said the "revelations" were "deeply disturbing."

(Reporting by Byron Kaye, Jane Wardell and James Regan in Sydney; additional reporting by Julia Harte in Washington, Mica Rosenberg in New York and Terry Wade in Houston,; Rachel Armstrong in London and Stephen Jewkes and Oleg Vukmanovic in Milan; editing by Susan Fenton, G Crosse and Chizu Nomiyama)

Unaoil – Unfolding The World’s Biggest Oil Bribery Scandal
By OilPrice on April 4, 2016 8:59 pm in Business
Unfolding The World’s Biggest Oil Bribery Scandal



Last week, a sweeping investigative report published by The Huffington Post and Fairfax Media put a little known Monaco-based company, Unaoil, at the center of a wide-ranging bribery scandal that involved dozens of corporate giants from around the world. The article calls it the “world’s biggest bribe scandal.”

After spending months investigating and combing through vast troves of emails and internal documents, The Huffington Post and Fairfax Media published a bombshell report on the bribery empire setup by Unaoil, a company based in Monaco. The report alleges that “Unaoil and its subcontractors bribed foreign officials to help major multinational corporations win contracts” in a variety of countries including Iraq, Kazakhstan, Iran, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and many more countries in Africa, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union.

Unaoil is not a household name, but the family-run company from Monaco, according to thousands of internal documents reviewed by the report’s authors, worked to win contracts for many regulars in the oil and gas industry, including Halliburton, KBR, Rolls-Royce, Samsung, Honeywell, FMC Technologies, Hyundai, and many more.

Related: Company Accused Of Bribing Oil Producers Has Offices Raided By Police

The publication of the report, putting Unaoil at the very center of a massive international bribery ring, was met with head scratching by many energy analysts. Despite its seemingly crucial role in so many oil and gas contracts awarded around the world, very few have heard of the company.

The alleged operation was relatively straightforward. The clients – exploration companies, construction and engineering firms, and oilfield service contractors – would pay Unaoil large sums, and Unaoil would secure contracts for them by bribing government officials in the country of interest. Many of Unaoil’s clients claim that they did not know that Unaoil was bribing government officials on their behalf, but the report asserts that some were either willfully blind or were fully aware of the corruption.

In the case of Libya, the exhaustive report describes one glaring exchange, in which a Canadian fracking company contacted Unaoil, asking questions about how to approach a bribe in Libya, using astonishingly candid language.

Related: Iran’s Masterplan To Ramp Up Energy Exports

“What we are curious about is to what type of Baksheesh [a common slang term for bribery] is needed to present to these men in order to get work started,” the president of the Canadian fracking company wrote to Unaoil. “I believe this is common practice in Libya, but we are not sure how to handle this. Is this something that needs to be done after work hours one on one? An added value amount to the ticket for them, or a flat fee a month, we are not sure. What are your thoughts on this?”

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Biggest Oil Bribery Scandal – Iraq

Iraq was one particular place where Unaoil had a heavy presence. The reports says Unaoil’s country manager for Iraq, Basil Al Jarah, routinely bribed Iraqi “government officials who were deemed ‘useful to us’ and to Unaoil’s clients – multinationals such as British firms Rolls-Royce, Petrofac and Clyde Pumps, U.S. listed giants Weatherford, Cameron/Natco and FMC Technologies and European firms such Saipem, SBM Offshore and MAN Turbo.” Using coded language in communications, Unaoil built relationships with powerful officials in the Iraqi government, including the oil ministry. The Unaoil fixers would take Iraqi officials on shopping trips and pay them bribes, which were called “holidays” in coded language.

Related: Oil Bust Takes Its Toll On Latin-American Oil Output

The result? Unaoil and its clients were “fleecing the people of Iraq, and in the process making a mockery of the U.S. government’s promise, after toppling Saddam Hussein, to ensure Iraq’s oil wealth would benefit all Iraqis.” Most of the documents reviewed by the investigation took place between 1999 and 2012, corresponding with the post-2003 invasion and rebuilding of Iraq, a period of time when much of the current landscape of Iraq’s oil sector was constructed.

Coming in the wake of the publication of the huge investigative report, police officials raided the offices of Unaoil in Monaco last week. The U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, the anti-corruption police in the UK and Australia have all opened up a joint investigation into Unaoil.

The report illustrates the extensive corruption that exists in the oil and gas world, particularly when it comes to the process of tendering lucrative contracts in countries with weak governance and corrupt bureaucracies.

Iraq To Investigate Claims Of Unaoil Corruption Against Top Officials
The report named several Iraqi officials, including former oil minister Hussein al-Shahristani who it alleged had accepted millions of dollars in bribes.
04/03/2016 11:30 pm ET
r Haider al-Abadi on Saturday directed the country’s highest corruption watchdog to investigate claims of graft in the awarding of oil contracts by the OPEC exporter and urged the courts to prosecute.

A joint report this week by Australia’s Fairfax Media and the Huffington Post, citing hundreds of thousands of emails, linked energy services company Unaoil and several international oil companies to corrupt practices such as claims of bribery in countries including Iraq.


Following an investigation by Fairfax Media and The Huffington Post, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has called for a probe in the awarding of oil contracts by Unaoil.
“Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi directs the Integrity Commission to take legal measures and calls on the judiciary to open immediate legal proceedings concerning the grave newspaper reports,” according to a statement from his office.

Iraq, which relies on oil exports for most of its revenue, has been plagued by corruption and mismanagement for years, ranking 161 out of 168 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index in 2015.

Graft continues to eat away at the government’s resources as it struggles with high spending due to the costs of the war against jihadist group Islamic State, which seized a third of Iraq’s territory in the north and west in 2014.

Abadi has pledged to battle corruption and on Thursday proposed a cabinet reshuffle aimed at weakening patronage networks, but he faces resistance from politicians who fear reform would undermine their wealth and influence.

The report named several Iraqi officials, including then-oil minister Hussein al-Shahristani who it alleged had accepted millions of dollars in bribes to influence the awarding of lucrative contracts.

Shahristani, now outgoing minister of higher education, has denied the accusations. He said on Saturday he was not aware of any attempt to bribe oil ministry officials during his tenure and had never been in contact with anyone from Unaoil.

“I have not met nor communicated with these people by phone or email - directly or through an intermediary - or in any way whatsoever, neither in the period between 2010 and 2012 nor before or after it,” he told reporters. “The first time I heard these names was in this report.”

Shahristani, a leader in Iraq’s ruling National Alliance coalition, urged the government to investigate everyone named in the report, including himself, and called on the Huffington Post to hand over all the documents it referenced.

“The law obligates whoever has information (about corruption) to reveal it,” he said.

[seemslikeadream]

This story came out a day before the Panama Papers were leaked. It haas now conveniently slipped off the MSM's radar.


Big Banks Aided Firm At Center Of International Bribery Scandal

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/un ... a88v2qehfr

Unaoil relied on both banks as it cut deals with corrupt regimes

No business can operate without bankers — not even the bribery business.

British financial giant HSBC and American bailout kingpin Citibank processed transactions, managed money and vouched for Unaoil, a once-obscure firm that is now at the center of a massive international corruption scandal. Police raided Unaoil’s Monaco offices and interviewed its executives on Thursday, a day after The Huffington Post and Fairfax Media first exposed the company’s practices. Law enforcement agencies in at least four nations are involved in a wide-ranging probe of the company and its partners.

Halliburton, KBR and other corporate conglomerates relied on Unaoil to deliver them lucrative contracts with corrupt regimes in oil-rich nations. But without the help of banks like HSBC and Citibank, none of Unaoil’s operations would have been possible. Both Citibank and HSBC declined to comment on whether Unaoil or the Ahsani family, who own and operate the firm, remain their clients.

“As a matter of policy, we only maintain relationships with clients who have been vetted through our strict due diligence and compliance checks,” HSBC spokeswoman Sorrel Beynon told HuffPost in a written statement. Two federal statutes, the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 and the Patriot Act of 2001, make it a crime for banks to knowingly process transactions related to illegal activity or to ignore red flags that they may be allowing illegal cash to flow through the financial system. Whether Citibank or HSBC broke the law depends on whether investigators determine that Unaoil’s deals were illegal and whether the banks knew or should have known about that. Thousands of internal Unaoil emails obtained by HuffPost and Fairfax Media make clear that both HSBC and Citibank were intimately involved in Unaoil’s complex finances.

In Kazakhstan, Unaoil helped U.S. energy conglomerate KBR and British oil company Petrofac secure millions of dollars of work on the Kashagan oil field, one of the biggest fossil fuel discoveries of the 21st century. The joint contract was facilitated by huge payments that Unaoil made to a consultant working for Kazakhstan’s state-owned oil company. That arrangement could potentially run afoul of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars companies that do business in the United States from paying bribes to foreign government agents.

The KBR money went through HSBC’s Private Bank subsidiary in Monaco, according to emails. The Petrofac funds went through Citibank’s affiliate in Geneva, Switzerland, until late 2008, when they began flowing through HSBC. HSBC also executed trades in shares of Petrofac stock on behalf of Unaoil. On the Kazakhstan deal alone, HSBC processed millions of dollars in payments to Unaoil from KBR.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIbOpTLE2Zg


This story is truly the one that reveals across the board corruption from US neocons and elitist warmongers, including those that directly financially benefit from US military and state actions. Note the Dick Cheney related companies KBR and Halliburton. The Huffington Post article lays it all out in extensive detail. A number of laws were intentionally broken and they are clearly pointing the finger at some of the biggest companies in the world, yet the media is nearly completely silent on this and has instead chosen to run with the Rockefellers, Soros, US AID funded Panama Papers leak, which now appears to be an external hack followed by a propaganda campaign against the US's stated enemies.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs4t4qETFa4



Interesting note, a Google search on April 8th, 2016 under the terms "CNN Unaoil" produced no results. The search terms "MSNBC Unaoil" also produced no results. "BBC Unaoil also produces no results.

Here's the story on the BBC's non reporting of this huge story. http://boingboing.net/2016/04/02/fou...-bbc-hasn.html

Four days in, and the BBC hasn't even mentioned the biggest bribery scandal in history

On Wednesday, Fairfax and Huffington Post broke the Unaoil story, revealing that they had been leaked a trove of email from an obscure Monaco family business that had acted as a global fixer in bribery and bid-rigging that looted the treasuries and oil-fields of some of the world's poorest countries, from Iraq to Yemen, acting on behalf of blue-chip companies like Rolls-Royce and Halliburton.

By week's end, police in the UK, US and Australia announced criminal investigations against top executives, and the Monaco police raided Unaoil's HQ.

But the BBC -- a national broadcaster charged with impartially reporting on the news -- has literally never mentioned Unaoil in any of its online news coverage. Many of the companies involved in the scandal are headquartered in the UK, and some, like Rolls-Royce, are practically synonymous with British industry. Meanwhile, the news coverage has described how Unaoil used the City of London as its go-to money laundry.

This is a terrible failing that discredits the Beeb, making it seem like financial corruption -- increasingly the brand identity of UK, plc -- is a no-go zone for its coverage.

[seemslikeadream]

[I've removed the article contained in this post in compliance with a legal take-down request. The original article has been deleted by The Guardian "owing to concerns over libelous claims" and has issued an apology. Apologies for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding. - Jeff]

[seemslikeadream]

Unaoil bribery scandal: Samsung, Hyundai, Rolls-Royce implicated in $1tn oil industry corruption
Mary-Ann Russon By Mary-Ann Russon
April 1, 2016 10:09 BST 76
The lucrative oil industry
Samsung, Hyundai and Rolls-Royce are just three technology companies that have been implicated in a huge global oil industry bribery scandal
Samsung, Hyundai and Rolls-Royce are among the companies that have been implicated in a major global oil industry scandal. The revelation surrounds a mysterious Monaco-based company called Unaoil which is accused of bribing government officials to secure technology business deals in the energy industry for international corporations. An estimated $1tn (£700bn) in bribes was paid out to corrupt officials in total.

According to tens of thousands of internal Unaoil emails and documents seen by the Huffington Post and Fairfax Media, South Korean firms Samsung and Hyundai; British firm Rolls-Royce; US companies Honeywell, Halliburton, KBR and FMC Technologies; Germany-based Man Turbo; and hundreds of other major international brands relied on Unaoil to secure lucrative contracts with a multitude of countries in the Middle East, Africa and the former Soviet Union.

The evidence, dated between 2003 and 2012, shows that large multinational corporations used Unaoil's help to win contracts in multiple countries including Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Syria and Tunisia, and that these companies' involvement probably helped to fuel political instability in the Middle East and some parts of Africa that erupted during the Arab Spring and continues to be exploited by terrorist groups today.

"The sources of this story never asked for money. What they wanted was for some of the wealthiest and most powerful figures in governments and companies across the globe to be exposed for acting corruptly, and with impunity, for years," Fairfax Media's investigative reporter Nick McKenzie writes in The Age.

The investigation began after McKenzie was sent a mysterious letter asking him to place an advertisement in the real estate section of French newspaper Le Figaro in July 2015 featuring the code word "Monte Cristo" if he wanted to help expose big names in the oil business for bribery.

Persistent, continued efforts to corrupt government officials

Interestingly, the Unaoil emails do not show government officials demanding bribes and favours, but more a persistent, continued effort to slowly corrupt foreign officials, starting with small gifts and shopping sprees, before eventually hooking the officials with a major bribe.

Of course, all the companies have denied any involvement with or knowledge of Unaoil's underhand activities - "Samsung has always complied with the laws and regulations when performing business," a spokesperson told Huff Post and Fairfax Media, while Rolls-Royce suspended its relationship with a Unaoil subsidiary in 2013, citing corruption allegations, and says it is "cooperating with the authorities" and that it "will not tolerate business misconduct of any kind".

Although the companies claim they did not know about the bribes, there are huge potential legal consequences for Unaoil and for all the companies it worked with, as many of the companies have close ties to industrialised nations that are all members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

All OECD members have to commit to international standards that bar any form of bribery of public officials in business transactions, and should the governments decide to investigate, they could investigate all the companies in their jurisdiction known to have worked with Unaoil.

Honeywell, Halliburton, KBR and FMC Technologies are all US companies, and under federal law, businesses are prevented from working with companies or individuals that they know, or ought to know, bribe foreign officials. US prosecutors have been known to go after US companies as well as foreign companies that do business with the US, and being "deliberately ignorant" is still considered to be a crime.

In the UK, where it is illegal for businesses to bribe absolutely anyone, not just government officials, the UK Serious Fraud Office is already investigating Rolls-Royce, but no specific details have been released

[seemslikeadream]

This Bank Got Caught In The Middle Of Two Massive Corporate Scandals In One Week
It hasn’t been a good few days for HSBC.
04/06/2016 05:47 pm ET | Updated 3 days ago

Ben Walsh
Business Reporter, The Huffington Post


HSBC’s building in Mexico City. The bank was linked to both the Unaoil and Panama Papers scandals this week.
When leaked documents expose dirty money or hidden wealth, international lender HSBC has an unfortunate knack for being involved.

In the last five days, the bank has been linked to two massive global corruption scandals: first, the Unaoil email leak, which exposed how middlemen paid officials to help huge corporations obtain contracts — and then, the leaked trove of documents known as the Panama Papers, which revealed in astonishing detail the offshore financial holdings of the world’s rich and powerful.

Documents from the Unaoil leak showed that HSBC helped American energy giant KBR and British oil company Petrofac get work on one of the biggest new oil fields in the world by routing their money to the Monaco-based firm Unaoil. The Huffington Post’s Zach Carter reported that the money then made its way to a consultant working for Kazakhstan’s state-owned oil company.

HSBC spokeswoman Sorrel Beynon told Carter in a statement that “As a matter of policy, we only maintain relationships with clients who have been vetted through our strict due diligence and compliance checks.” Unaoil, KBR and Petrofac have denied any wrongdoing in statements to HuffPost. HSBC did not immediately reply to a request for comment on this story.

Reporting on the Panama Papers, The Guardian said HSBC also lobbied on behalf of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s cousin, Rami Makhlouf, to help him keep his Swiss accounts open as war in Syria intensified. Makhlouf’s family controls an estimated 60 percent of Syria’s wealth and has been subject to U.S. sanctions since 2008.

Asked about the Makhlouf work, Beynon told HuffPost, “We work closely with the authorities to fight financial crime and implement sanctions. Our policy is clear that offshore accounts can only remain open either where clients have been thoroughly vetted (including due diligence, ‘Know Your Customer’, source of wealth, and tax transparency checks), where authorities ask us to maintain an account for the purposes of monitoring activity, or where an account has been frozen based on sanctions obligations.”

HSBC has already been accused of banking for some of the world’s most unsavory people. Another document cache — the Swiss Leaks — led to allegations that the bank helped clients hide money in secret Swiss bank accounts. HSBC paid $43 million in 2015 to settle the case.

Even earlier, in 2012, the bank reached a $1.9 billion settlement with the Justice Department, which had accused HSBC of doing business with terrorists, drug cartels and rogue nations like Iran. Yet in the context of HSBC’s billions of dollars in annual profit — never mind the $60 trillion in transfers it allegedly failed to monitor for money laundering — the settlement amounted to little more than a “speeding ticket,” Quartz’s Tim Fernholz wrote at the time.

Internal practices at the bank were reportedly so bad that HSBC executive John Root criticized the bank’s Mexican affiliate in 2007 for “rubber-stamping unacceptable risks” and ignoring clear warning signs that it was helping Mexican drug cartels launder money. “What is this, the School of Low Expectations Banking?” Root asked rhetorically in an email, per Bloomberg.

Faced with evidence of the bank’s woeful money laundering protocols — including $1 billion that HSBC transferred to a Saudi bank linked to al Qaeda — the bank’s head of compliance, David Bagley, announced his resignation at a 2012 Senate hearing.

As part of its 2012 settlement with the Justice Department, HSBC was supposed to implement new processes to crack down on dirty money. But Bloomberg reported last year that a court-appointed monitor found that the managers at one unit of the bank simply adopted a “four-part strategy — Discredit, Deny, Deflect and Delay.”

[seemslikeadream]

How a Teacher and one Ivan robbed Iraqis blind
Damning report exposes the shocking scale of corruption in the country’s oil industry and they key players, many within the circle of power
Published: 12:34 April 3, 2016 Gulf News
By Saadallah Al Fathi, Special to Gulf News

Last week I wrote: “Thirteen years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US, UK and their allies and clients, the country is no more liberated, democratic, free of corruption, peaceful [or] united. And certainly worried about its future and the fragmentation that may come about as a result of failing governments to safeguard the well-being of Iraqis.”

It never came to my mind that corruption in Iraq is going to be as exposed as it has been in the last few days. Reports and allegations have been rampant since 2003, but corrupt officials were not brought to justice. Some were even helped to flee the country to reside with the very nations of the occupation, where they now are enjoying their loot.

However, the world is not yet devoid of honest professional people who expose corrupt officials and companies to open the eyes of the people of Iraq on how their wealth has been squandered since 2003. The damning investigative report in the Fairfax Media and the Huffington Post is the talk of many towns, especially in Iraq. Not by the Iraqi government, but by some newspapers, television channels and the social networks.

It involves the exposure of Monaco-based Unaoil, owned by an Iranian family, which is at the heart of a global bribery operation in many countries, but specifically in Iraq where many US, British, European and Australian companies willingly participated.

The report exposed former deputy prime minister and oil minister and current Minister of Higher Education Hussain Al Shahristani (dubbed the Teacher), former oil minister Abdul Karim Luaibi (dubbed Mister M), the former South Oil Company director-generals Kifah Numan and Dhia Jafar (known as Lighthouse), in addition to a project manager by the name of Odai Al Quraishi (Ivan).

It is now being reported that multi-million dollars in bribes were passed on to them through two Iraqi intermediaries — Basil Al Jarah and Ahmad Al Jibouri — who also pocketed huge amounts.

While the operation started in 2003, it took a large jump upward from 2008 onward to deliver huge contracts to Unaoil’s clients that included international oil, engineering and supply companies.

The majority of the companies named are known to be excellent in their services and products and one would ask why they needed to bribe their way for work.

The only answer is that the middle men manipulated the willing officials to work that way and make huge money on the side.

It is sad to know that some Iraqi officials informed Unaoil that suppliers “could charge the Iraqi government inflated prices, to ensure fatter profits” and that “the cost will be no object”. The report says that “Ivan and Lighthouse repeatedly leaked information to Unaoil, and rigged tender committees to favour its clients” — outrageous indeed but true.

The case of Leighton — the Australian construction giant awarded $1.3 billion of contracts for offshore pipelines in Iraq — was investigated by Australian authorities and its management admitted to paying bribes. The name of Lighthouse came up in the proceedings and the media. The Iraq government did not even bother to investigate and Lighthouse was rewarded with a promotion to the post of deputy oil minister.

The biggest bribes went to the Teacher and Mister M, both at the highest levels of government for no reason of past professional success or achievement except perhaps their willingness to serve the sectarian religious parties and their drive for corruption.

This time around, the Iraqi government needs a miracle to cover up for these corrupt officials, especially after “[the] FBI, [the] US Department of Justice and anti-corruption police in Britain and Australia have launched a joint investigation into revelations of a massive global bribery racket in the oil industry,” targeting Unaoil and its clients and bankers who helped the Monaco-based company and its intermediaries to launder their money.

Ahmad Mousa Jiyad of the Iraq Development Consultancy and Research in Norway said “[by] making such assertion, the publisher is usually, under European and international law, legally responsible for such disclosure if proven baseless. That is what makes allegations have sharp teeth and nails.”

He urges the Iraqi authorities not only to investigate but to “consider taking legal actions against Unaoil and all involved companies that are mentioned in the article, and [authorities] should seek to have compensation accordingly.” Not very likely, but let us hope.

The Iraqi people should know that while Unaoil was making millions of dollars through these corrupt officials, its functionaries describe them as “greedy”.

But make no mistake, much more will come when the oil and gasfield licensing rounds are investigated, in which the Teacher and Mister M were the champions.

[seemslikeadream]

Top Washington Lawyer Cleared Unaoil In Anti-Corruption Report
A few years later, Kevin Abikoff was providing legal advice to the shady company.
04/11/2016 12:38 pm ET
Jessica Schulberg
Foreign Affairs Reporter, The Huffington Post
Zach Carter
Senior Political Economy Reporter, The Huffington Post
Paul Blumenthal
Money in Politics Reporter, The Huffington Post
A prominent Washington lawyer who wrote a report finding no significant concerns of corrupt practices at Unaoil, the company now at the center of a massive bribery scandal, later provided legal services to Unaoil itself, according to internal emails obtained by The Huffington Post and Fairfax Media.

Kevin Abikoff, a partner in the corporate law firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed who lectures around the world on anti-corruption enforcement, declared Unaoil to be generally compliant with bribery laws in a 2007 report for KBR, which had hired him to investigate Unaoil’s past work with the U.S. engineering and construction giant in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Abikoff and Cyrus Ahsani, Unaoil’s CEO, stayed in touch in the years after Abikoff gave Unaoil the all-clear. They made efforts to meet in person to catch up as they traveled through Paris and Dubai, shared news about the birth of their children, and eventually worked together. In 2011, Abikoff sent an engagement letter to Unaoil’s CEO, outlining an agreement in which his law firm would provide anti-corruption legal advice to Unaoil.

It’s not uncommon for lawyers at major law firms to represent companies they once investigated. There’s no evidence that Abikoff watered down his 51-page report for KBR to favor a current or possible future client, or that his subsequent work with Unaoil posed a conflict of interest. But the episode highlights how a savvy company like KBR can go through a formal process of attempting to detect corruption and still miss actual instances of wrongdoing.

Instead, Abikoff’s findings helped KBR and Unaoil continue their lucrative partnership. The due diligence report also gave Unaoil, a Monaco-based middleman, credibility with other companies looking to win energy contracts with oil-rich governments.

Internal emails suggest that Abikoff’s 2007 investigation into Unaoil was, at best, incomplete. Internal Unaoil’s internal emails obtained by HuffPost and Fairfax Media showed Unaoil paying government officials millions of dollars to win business around the world. Some of these emails have Unaoil and KBR employees corresponding in coded language as early as 2005 to discuss Unaoil bribing public officials in Kazakhstan.

X

Part of the problem may have been the Hughes Hubbard report’s reliance on Unaoil to disclose information about its own business practices. Due diligence and political risk experts, whom HuffPost briefed on the report, suggested that a lack of independent and local on-the-ground sources might have hindered the law firm’s ability to verify the information Unaoil provided.

Interviewing employees from the company being investigated is valuable, but has its limits, said Richard Bistrong, CEO of the Front-Line Anti-Bribery consulting group. Bistrong previously spent 14 months in federal prison for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a U.S. anti-bribery law, and also covertly cooperated with international law enforcement.

“Certainly, for people who are engaged in wrongdoing, including myself, when I was asked questions at the time of my conduct, during an internal investigation, I was not entirely forthright, mostly due to my own fear of criminal liability. This shows the value and the peril of interviewing people in due diligence who might actually be engaged or know of wrongdoing,” Bistrong said. “Very often, a robust due diligence process will include retaining a third party due diligence in-country provider that will go ahead and do an analysis in-country,” he added.

“In high-risk markets such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, it is often prudent to hire a specialist business intelligence/investigative firm to complement and supplement interviews which a law firm may have undertaken,” echoed Steven Fox, CEO and founder of Veracity Worldwide, a New York-based group that conducts due diligence investigations. An investigator with a deep source network and in-country experience can get “candid assessments of a potential agent’s reputation and record for probity,” Fox added.

Hard to gauge on the phone but this guy seems reasonable and is no fool.
Unaoil executive Peter Willimont, in a private email referring to Kevin Abikoff
KBR had used Unaoil’s services for years. But by 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating KBR for an unrelated bribery scheme in Nigeria that would eventually cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.

In the face of the DOJ investigation, the energy services giant revamped its formal oversight of business partners. KBR, which at the time owed Unaoil approximately $2 million, informed the company that it would be bringing in an outside law firm — Hughes Hubbard — to conduct a due diligence inquiry into Unaoil’s past work with KBR.

Unaoil’s inner circle — which included company founder Ata Ahsani and his sons Cyrus, Saman and Sassan — were initially anxious about that arrangement. KBR was already behind on payments, and Unaoil top brass worried in emails that the company had hired Abikoff to lay the groundwork for legal action against Unaoil.

But Unaoil’s higher-ups soon warmed to the anti-corruption lawyer, praising him after initial phone calls as “a reasonable guy” whose due diligence could end up helping them get their money.

“Hard to gauge on the phone but this guy seems reasonable and is no fool – I believe this was said of Himmler at one stage of his life?” Unaoil marketing director Peter Willimont wrote to the company’s top executives in January 2007, making an apparently joking reference to Nazi official Heinrich Himmler.

Over the next several months, Abikoff and his team interviewed dozens of officials from Unaoil, KBR and the U.S. embassies in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to evaluate Unaoil’s work for KBR in those two countries. He visited Unaoil’s offices in Monaco, although it is not clear from the July 2007 report how many of the other interviews were conducted in person. In addition, the team reviewed Unaoil’s tax and registration certifications, credit reports, a bank reference letter, some personnel records, and selected contract paperwork, communications, and payment records between Unaoil and KBR.

Abikoff found that some of Unaoil’s payment practices could use improvement: “While the current arrangements may not have been entered into in a fashion that creates inherent FCPA concerns because of their execution, the arrangements also cannot be supported by logic or good FCPA practices,” he wrote, referring to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Noting Unaoil’s willingness to restructure these practices, Abikoff concluded, “no significant FCPA concerns appear to be raised as a result of the earlier arrangement.”

We should frame this.
Ata Ahsani, referring to an email highlighting the value of the KBR report
Abikoff declined to comment to HuffPost on his work with either KBR or Unaoil, saying he was restricted from doing so by attorney-client privilege and confidentiality obligations.

The due diligence report produced for KBR was marked “Privileged and Confidential,” but the Ahsanis obtained a copy from a contact at Petrofac, a British oil and gas company that partnered with KBR and had received the report in an email.

“Please make very very sure that [a KBR executive] does not find out that I have forwarded this to you,” the Petrofac employee wrote to Cyrus Ahsani in August 2007. “Try to get your own copy directly from him to cover your tracks.”

The report was good news for the Ahsanis. A respected U.S. lawyer with an expertise in international corruption law had essentially cleared Unaoil as a responsible business partner. KBR and Unaoil moved forward on efforts to obtain a multimillion-dollar contract in Kazakhstan. Perhaps as important, other companies looking to do business with Unaoil later referenced Abikoff’s findings as an indication of Unaoil’s reliability.

In October 2007, when the German turbomachinery company MAN Turbo asked for a reference, Unaoil referred the potential client to KBR, which offered a glowing recommendation. The MAN Turbo executive wrote back to KBR that he viewed Unaoil’s ability to pass KBR’s due diligence process as “clear evidence of their high level of good standing.”

When the conversation was forwarded to the Ahsanis, Ata Ahsani wrote to his sons Cyrus and Saman, “We should frame this.”

Soon after, Cyrus Ahsani sent his contact at KBR a gift box from the upscale London store Fortnum & Mason and an invitation to visit him and his wife in the South of France.

Cyrus Ahsani also reached out to Abikoff shortly after the completion of the KBR report and suggested they might work together in the future. “It would be a pleasure to meet up with you anytime you are in Europe and to discuss potential synergies now that we have successfully completed the KBR due diligence,” Ahsani wrote in a November 2007 email.

The two men kept in touch over the next several years. Abikoff sent Ahsani enforcement updates related to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In 2008, he offered to introduce the Unaoil executive to his contacts at Alstom, a French rail company. Although Ahsani expressed enthusiasm about the meeting, the email correspondence does not indicate whether it ever materialized. (In 2014, Alstom would agree to pay $772 million after pleading guilty to bribery charges — the second-highest settlement in U.S. anti-corruption enforcement history.)

The first time Hughes Hubbard formally worked with Unaoil was in 2011. The engagement letter between the two does not indicate why Unaoil hired the law firm, but the internal emails provide some possible clues.

Media outlets reported on June 22, 2011, that an Italian oil company, Eni, was coming under investigation for alleged bribery related to contracts in Iraq and Kuwait. The leaked emails show that Unaoil had paid off Eni employees for inside information about contracts in Iraq. Two days after those media reports, Unaoil executives received an email from one of their business partners, alerting them that they would likely be questioned in the probe. Emails show that Abikoff and Ahsani spoke by phone that weekend. On the following Monday, Abikoff emailed Ahsani the engagement letter to formalize a working relationship between Unaoil and his law firm. The emails show Abikoff’s colleagues at Hughes Hubbard discussing plans with Ahsani to fly to Europe later that week.

Abikoff and Hughes Hubbard were hired to advise Unaoil on anti-corruption best practices. On at least one occasion, the lawyer also aimed to warn off those who, falsely, according to Unaoil, accused the company of wrongdoing. In 2014, he composed a stern three-page draft letter to the legal team at Rolls Royce, urging that employees of the British automobile company — which has also worked with Unaoil — “cease and desist” from making what he termed “inflammatory and slanderous comments.” It is not clear if that letter was ever sent.

Rolls Royce is now cooperating with investigators from the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office, the company told HuffPost and Fairfax Media. The company declined to say whether that cooperation extends to its work with Unaoil. Earlier this month, Monaco police raided Unaoil’s offices and the homes of its directors. The Serious Fraud Office, which is now looking at Unaoil alongside the Australian, U.S. and Iraqi governments, had suggested the raid.

[Grizzly]

The Law. Hahaha... they've long infected, and bastardized, and toxified "the law"
It's a malignant cancer, now.

[seemslikeadream]

Further Corruption Accusations in Iraq: Unaoil Reportedly Bribed Past Iraqi Officials to Win Bids
Unaoil is a family owned and run company founded by Iranian Ata Ahsani who fled Tehran during the Islamic revolution.

Tue 12th Apr
Allegations have surfaced and have implicated Iraqi government officials in corruption charges involving the oil company, Unaoil.
According to reports by Fairfax Media, The AGe and the Sydney Morning Herald newspapers, The Huffington Post, all corroborate that Monaco-based Unaoil bribed and paid off government officials in Iraq, Iran and Libya. After the careful examination of several thousand emails, the article implicates that Unaoil channelled funds to officials on behalf of operators working with Unaoil to help win billions of dollars worth of government bids and contracts.

The following companies were reportedly implicated in the deal with Unaoil and involve country manager, Basil Al Jarah in Iraq: Rolls-Royce, Petrofac, Clyde Pumps, Weatherford,Cameron/Natco, FMC Technologies, Saipem, SBM Offshore, MAN Turbo, Rosetti Marino, ABB, The Shaw Group, Core Labs, Leighton Offshore, Weir and Hyundai.

Furthermore, former Minister of Oil (and current Minister of Education), Dr. Hussain al-Shahristani as well as Abdul Kareem al-Luaibi [Elaibi], former Minister for Oil; Kifah Numan, Director General of theSouth Oil Company (SOC); Dhia Jaffar also a Director General of the SOC and since last year a Deputy Minister for Oil in the Iraqi government; and Oday al-Quraishi (SOC).

Unaoil is a family owned and run company founded by Iranian Ata Ahsani who fled Tehran during the Islamic revolution. Unaoil denies all charges: “strenuously [denies] any wrongdoing and consider[s] the allegations to be baseless and entirely false.”