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Hookers, spies, cases full of dollars...how BP spent £45m to win 'Wild East' oil rights
Daily Mail ^ | 12th May 2007 | By GLEN OWEN

Posted on 05/12/2007 8:28:51 PM PDT by DAVEY CROCKETT

BP executives working for Lord Browne spent millions of pounds on champagne-fuelled sex parties to help secure lucrative international oil contracts.

The company also worked with MI6 to help bring about changes in foreign governments, according to an astonishing account of life inside the oil giant.

Les Abrahams, who led BP's successful bid for a multi-million-pound deal with one of the former Soviet republics, today claims that Browne - who was forced to resign as chief executive last month after the collapse of legal proceedings against The Mail on Sunday - presided over an "anything goes" regime of sexual licence, spying and financial sweeteners.

He also claims that Home Secretary John Reid was arrested at gunpoint on a BP-funded foreign trip for being out on the streets after a military curfew had been imposed.

Mr Abrahams tells how he spent £45 million in expenses over just four months of negotiations with Azerbaijan's state oil company.

Armed with a no-limit company credit card, he ordered supplies of champagne and caviar to be flown on company jets into the boomtown capital, Baku, to be consumed at the "sex parties".


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: gasprices; oil

1 posted on 05/12/2007 8:28:58 PM PDT by DAVEY CROCKETT
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To: nw_arizona_granny

FYI


2 posted on 05/12/2007 8:29:48 PM PDT by DAVEY CROCKETT (Waiting on GOD...)
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To: DAVEY CROCKETT

Why don’t I ever get invited to these parties?


3 posted on 05/12/2007 8:42:01 PM PDT by MistrX
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To: MistrX

he collapse of legal proceedings against The Mail on Sunday....

You mean a defamation suit, like the one in which Liberace won $600,000 from a newspaper that insinuated he was gay?


4 posted on 05/12/2007 8:43:06 PM PDT by Wally_Kalbacken (Seldom right but never in doubt)
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To: MistrX
And Azerbaijan is a Muslim Republic. Cash and sex parties are great negotiating tools, so whats new?
barbra ann
5 posted on 05/12/2007 9:09:25 PM PDT by barb-tex (Why replace the IRS with anything?)
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To: DAVEY CROCKETT
"BP executives working for Lord Browne spent millions of pounds on champagne-fuelled sex parties"

Who doesn't?

6 posted on 05/13/2007 3:37:25 AM PDT by Diogenesis (Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum)
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To: DAVEY CROCKETT
Ahhhhh! Shades of the old United Fruit way of doing business.

Once upon a time if you messed with "El Pulpo", a revolution was right around the corner.

7 posted on 05/13/2007 4:07:21 AM PDT by Jimmy Valentine (DemocRATS - when they speak, they lie; when they are silent, they are stealing the American Dream)
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