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  • Bribes, Favors, and a Billion-Dollar Yacht: Inside the Crazy World of the Men Who Do Oil Companies’ Dirty Work
    http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/05/exxon-chevron-oil-fixers-silverstein

    There’s no question that US companies use fixers, and typically it’s not a big secret. Certainly the US government has either turned a blind eye or actively encouraged the use of fixers. I’ll give you one example. There was an American businessman named Jim Giffen who was very prominent in the Soviet Union before the collapse and afterwards, and he had very strong business ties in Russia and Kazakhstan. He was a personal friend of the president of Kazakhstan. And there were a few concessions available that every major oil company wanted in on, two of the largest concessions in the world, worth tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars. And so several American oil companies, I know #Chevron and I think #Exxon as well, but some of the big firms retained the services of Jim Giffen as their consultant. ’Hey, he’s just a consultant, he’s just giving us the lay of the land.’ Well it turned out that he actually had taken fees paid to him by the oil companies and used part of them to pay money directly into bank accounts controlled by the president of Kazakhstan and the prime minister. He bought the president and first lady matching snowmobiles, and he bought the first lady jewelry. Everybody knew what was going on.

    Of course, when he got caught, the oil companies were “shocked,” you know, “Oh, we had no idea, we just thought he was getting us the concessions somehow.” And the US government was certainly aware of what was going on. And, in fact, Giffen got busted, went to trial, and at the end of the trial, he said “The US government knew and approved, and I was in contact with the CIA, and everybody was aware of what I was doing.” And the judge agreed, the judge threw out the case. So the US government is appalled and outraged when French companies pay bribes, or even more so when Chinese companies pay bribes, and if US companies pay bribes, it’s like “Really we knew nothing about that, oh, that’s terrible.” But everybody knew what was going on. That’s how the oil business runs.

    http://www.versobooks.com/system/images/3245/original/Secret_World_of_Oil_PB_Export_300dpi_CMYK.jpg
    http://www.versobooks.com/books/1630-the-secret-world-of-oil

    #petrole #corruption