French Oil Execs Arrested For Bribery In Iran
By Ed Morrissey on Iran
Captain's Quarters
In a move reminiscent of the French involvement with the Oil-For-Food Program at the UN, three top executives of the French oil giant Total found themselves under arrest for bribery. In this case, the three didn't send money to Saddam Hussein for access to Iraqi oil fields, but rather sent millions of dollars under the table to the Iranian mullahcracy:
<<< The head of the French oil giant Total SA was detained by police yesterday over suspicions that the company paid millions of dollars in bribes for its operations in an Iranian offshore gas field.
Christophe de Margerie, 55, and two directors, were summoned on the orders of Philippe Courroye, a judge who last year placed him under criminal investigation in a case involving Iraq. That concerned the company’s suspected payment of bribes to aquire supplies in the UN Oil-for-Food programme in 1999-2003.
Total, France’s biggest public company, said that it was “completely behind its executives” and insisted that the Iranian agreements were legal. ...
Swiss investigators uncovered evidence of illicit payments and passed the case to France last December. According to Le Monde, a total of €60 million had allegedly been paid to Iranian officials up to 2003, including sums paid into accounts controlled by a son of Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Iranian President. >>>
There are direct connections to the OFF scandal. CEO de Margerie, called the Big Moustache by his peers, allegedly paid off middlemen for access to Iraqi oil contracts. A French court ordered his arrest last fall on those charges, which are still being investigated. de Margerie also sits at the center of an alleged money-laundering scheme in Cameroon.
de Margerie is apparently providing a full-employment program to lawyers and investogators.
Will this be another OFF scandal? Probably not. The sanctions on Iran now did not exist in 2003, when this bribery allegedly occurred, at least not in Europe. It does show, though, that any sanctions regime that involves oil will be difficult to maintain for long, as chronically corrupt entities like Total will break any rules in order to gain economic advantage over their rivals. This rot starts from the head.
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