Free Republic

Oil giant Total has long played a dangerous game in Iran, Sudan and Burma. Now it's trying to get back into Iraq.Total S.A., The French oil major that has been in Iraq since 1927, isn't saying much these days about how it's going to maneuver its way back in. But that doesn't mean it can't dream. Word is that it has already had informal discussions with ExxonMobil about forming a joint venture to exploit Iraq's Majnoon and Nahr bin Umar oilfields as soon as a new Iraqi government is formed. Together those two fields have the potential to pump out...

Elf Aquitaine, until its privatisation in 1994, was much more than a oil company - according to prosecutors at the trial of Elf's top managers. They claim the state-owned firm worked as an unofficial arm of France's murkiest diplomacy. The close relationship between Elf and French officials is well-documented, and goes back to the presidency of General Charles de Gaulle. As the company expanded into Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, Elf paid secret "commissions" to African officials with the blessing of French governments. By the 1980s Elf had operations in Gabon, Congo Brazzaville, Cameroon, Angola and Nigeria - which,...

With a cast of characters including a former prime minister, some of the richest executives in France and Germany, Paris' biggest-ever corporate crime trial continued this week with 37 defendants in the dock. France's largest-ever corporate corruption trial resumed in Paris this week with more drama than your average Mexican soap opera. The case offered further tales of illicit backroom dealing, a €5 million divorce settlement tab picked up by French taxpayers and allegations that a former French prime minister accepted bribes in connection with a string of acquisitions made by the state-owned French oil conglomerate Elf Aquitane in the...