London, March 23, 2008 -- BP and the oil giant’s former chief executive Lord Browne have been named in an American lawsuit alleging bribery of government officials in Grenada.
The legal action, filed in New York, claims that bribes have been
offered in an attempt to win valuable oil and gas licences off the
Caribbean island.
Other defendants named in the claim include the Russian energy group
TNK-BP, in which BP has a 50% stake, and Russian “oligarch” Mikhail
Fridman.
The case has been brought by Texan oil company RSM Production Corporation and its president Jack Grynberg.
According to papers filed with the US district court for the southern
district of New York, Grynberg and RSM signed an oil and gas
exploration agreement with the government of Grenada in 1996.
In September of that year, Grenada’s minister for energy and deputy
prime minister, Gregory Bowen also named as a defendant told Grynberg
that he expected bribes in order to allow RSM to do business on the
island, the claim says.
Grynberg refused, but in 1999 passed on certain information about
proposed drilling sites to BP in the hope of forming a partnership with
the British oil company, say the court documents.
BP turned Grynberg down. But the lawsuit alleges that information about Grenada may have been passed to TNK.
BP joined forces with TNK and another Russian energy group Sidanco to
form TNK-BP in 2003 The Grynberg claim alleges a company and one of its
directors “serve as fronts for . . . efforts to bribe Grenadian
officials, and thereby acquire rights to explore, develop and produce
the Grenadian offshore areas believed to contain very promising, vast
recoverable reserves of petroleum hydrocarbons”.
According to the claim, the attempted bribes were to persuade Grenada
to break its 1996 deal with RSM and grant rights to TNK-BP instead.
The case has also reached a court in Britain. The World Bank
International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID)
sitting in London is hearing a related claim, made by Grynberg’s RSM
against the government of Grenada. The court says the case is “pending”.
Grynberg has clashed with BP before. He was involved in the discovery of the Kashagan oil-field in Kazakhstan in the 1990s.
He later sued BP for allegedly trying to exclude him from what he
claimed to be his rightful stake in the field and brought a
racketeering charge against Browne. The case was settled.
BP would not comment on the Grenadian case as it involves TNK-BP. TNK could not be contacted.
Last week police in Moscow raided the head office of TNK-BP as part of
what they said was a criminal inquiry into Sidanco, which was rolled
into TNK-BP five years ago.
There are fears that the action could be part of a Kremlin campaign to
increase pressure on foreign investors. There has been persistent
speculation that Russia’s state-owned Gazprom wants to take control of
TNK-BP.
|
