World's biggest bribe scandal
Source: The Age
The company that bribed the world
It was the company with jet-set style and dirty hands. From the tiny principality of Monaco, Unaoil reached across the globe to pay multi-million dollar bribes in oil rich states. The beneficiaries? Some of the biggest companies in England, Europe, America and Australia.
Police launch joint global investigation
The biggest leak of documents in oil-industry history has exposed Monaco-based company Unaoil as an agent of serious corruption. Now, law enforcement groups around the world, including the FBI, are taking notice.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/interactive/2016/the-bribe-factory/
This story, based on a leak of thousands of emails and a half year long investigation by Fairfax and HuffPo, was first released yesterday and updated with part 2 a few hours ago.
dorkzilla
(5,141 posts)How many crooked politicians and CEOs will face charges? If history is any indicator, it will be some lower-level schlub who lacks the protection necessary to sidestep justice.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)and, in the worst cases, probation.
ChairmanAgnostic
(28,017 posts)That's news, too.
I wonder what connections the Clinton Foundation has with these folks.
Wilms
(26,795 posts)Chayes later began working for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, waging an internal war to persuade policymakers to focus on corruption. The issue ultimately reached the desk of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who largely dismissed it in a 2010 memo that remains classified.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/unaoil-bribery-scandal-corruption_us_56fa2b06e4b014d3fe2408b9
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)She talked to a former Police Sargent who said if he saw Taliban setting up a booby trap for police, he wouldn't warn anyone.
They're so corrupt, and they shake down everyone. And they're all protected from the Presidents office, all the way down. A top-down organized crime syndicate.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)packman
(16,296 posts)Sort of like the sun coming up in the East, isn't it? I mean, come on - everyone sorta knows but nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Yallow
(1,926 posts)Zero fat cat executives who knew bribes were being paid will be punished.
They only put poor people in the slammer.
Laws are only for the powerless.
Now bring my yacht around.
Response to Yallow (Reply #7)
Vilis Veritas This message was self-deleted by its author.
valerief
(53,235 posts)Yallow
(1,926 posts)Zero people went to jail then too.
Bribing corrupt scumbags is how we cause political unrest, so we can have wars!!!!
War is great for the bottom line right folks?
Yallow
(1,926 posts)GE is of course above the law.
Fines, fines, and more fines.
Zero prosecutions.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/07/27/ge-settles-kickback-allegations-in-oil-for-food-program-with-sec/
zwielicht
(134 posts)The journalists who got this story out deserve a lot of respect, some background about how hard it must have been:
How bribe factory Unaoil tried to stop us telling their secrets
How I Exposed A Corporate Bribery Scandal Involving The Biggest Names In The Oil Business
zwielicht
(134 posts)mrdmk
(2,943 posts)Unaoil and its subcontractors bribed foreign officials to help major multinational corporations win contracts, tens of thousands of the companys internal documents show. The investigation illustrates just how complicit big Western companies are in corruption overseas. It also shows that by enabling corruption, these companies fuel the kind of political instability that allows insurgencies like the self-described Islamic State to grow.
Its a complicated story, so were explaining it all for you here.
What is Unaoil?
Unaoil says that it provides international clients with industrial solutions to the energy sector in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. Its business is very basic, founder Ata Ahsani said. What we do is integrate western technology with local capability. But the emails suggest that Unaoils business plan was far more complicated.
Whos in charge?
Unaoil is controlled by the wealthy Ahsani family of Monaco. Its patriarch, Ata Ahsani, was in the engineering business in Iran before the 1979 revolution. Like many secular and relatively wealthy Iranians, he left to establish a life in the West. By 1991, he had set up Unaoil. Today, he is its chairman. The CEO is his son Cyrus, a noted Monaco socialite who serves as treasurer of the small nation-states Ambassadors Club, whose honorary president is Prince Albert II. Saman Ahsani, Cyrus brother, is Unaoils COO and a prominent figure in Londons Iranian expatriate community.
Which companies worked with Unaoil?
American companies Halliburton, Honeywell, KBR and FMC Technologies; Korean manufacturers Samsung and Hyundai; U.K.-based Rolls-Royce; and Germany-based Man Turbo all worked with Unaoil, according to internal documents. So did hundreds of other firms, according to an internal Unaoil spreadsheet.
link with more info: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/unaoil-scandal-explained_us_56fbd2f0e4b0daf53aee0cff?jxnbff762pmwbfbt9