Shell, page-6

Mr H .................. its easy for the govern of a country to accuse its predecessor of corruption but its slightly harder to accuse the oil company of making the payments to the company / companies that the then govern of the day demand they make then the new govern accuse the company of corruption, note am not saying Shell and Eni acted OK (or for that matter are corrupt) but rather when a govern sets out to white wash their predecessors then its more than likely innocent bystanders that get caught in the action. Only time will tell if Shell and Eni actually knew that, when the payment was made, the  $1.1b would end up in private bank accounts or not!!! What will be interesting is to see if the Nigerians can get the block back as a PSC is pretty binding on both parties and the Nigerian Govern will need to prove to the international courts that Shell and Eni knew exactly where the payment was destined for when it was paid, this will not be an easy task IMO.

This is exactly what happened in Ghana when Komos was trying to proceed to develop the Jubilee field which even went as far as involving the US Govern anti-corruption agency, after months of wrangling the Ghanaian Govern finally relented admitted the payments were above board and allowed the  development to proceed.

HKP