Source: http://www.fcpablog.com/blog/tag/jack-grynberg
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 04:42:36+00:00

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Jack Grynberg: "I have been pursuing fraud in the energy industry for the past 15 years."Colorado-based independent oilman Jack Grynberg filed a 311-page complaint in December with the European Commission. He's asking for an investigation into alleged bribery and tax evasion in Kazakhstan by several oil companies he once partnered with. His claims relate to oil and gas developments dating back to the early 1990s -- the same ones at the center of the U.S. prosecutions of James Giffen and Brian Williams. See our post James Giffen And America's Secrets.
Grynberg, 78, who speaks six languages including Russian, is alleging "wholesale bribery and corruption of top Kazakh government officials." He claims the corruption led to his company's loss of rights in the Greater Kashagan and Karachaganak Oil Fields -- estimated to hold more than 9 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 25 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
His complaint names BP plc, StatoilHydro A.S.A., Total S.A., Royal Dutch Shell plc, ENI S.p.A., ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and Inpex.
My lawsuit in Brussels will attempt to open the window on this large scale bribery, tax evasion and corruption scheme, obtain subpoena power, and finally answer . . . questions which have remained unanswered for too long. It is unfortunate that the U.S. Department of Justice is attempting to prosecute the messengers, namely Mr. James H. Giffen and Mr. Brian J. Williams, instead of the main criminals and their cheif executives. My hope is that the European Commission will take a more balanced and assertive approach.
The complaint to the EC asserts that the alleged bribery infringed Articles 81 and 82 of the EEC Treaty (antitrust and abusive behavior).
Why the European Commission? Grynberg says he's exhausted his potential U.S. remedies and hasn't been able to subpoena the witnesses he needs (he deposed Giffen, who asserted his 5th Amendment privilege). Grynberg's civil fraud and Rico suit in the District Of Columbia against BP, Statoil, British Gas, and their top executives was bounced last year. The court ordered private arbitration in Canada under agreements Grynberg had signed for the projects.
In 1995, he filed one of the first False Claim Act qui tam lawsuits against 60 natural gas pipeline companies in the U.S., listing "13 ways condensate (light oil) and natural gas are stolen from federal and Native American lands."
In 2007, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney of New York introduced H.R. 435 (reintroduced this year as H.R. 1462), intended to stop the theft of condensate on federal and Native American lands in ways Grynberg identified.
In September last year, he was awarded $5.66 million in a federal suit in the District of Columbia against the Central African Republic's President, Minister of Mines and Energy, and former Ambassador to the U.S. His suit claimed they demanded a $2 million bribe for an exclusive oil and gas development concession that Grynberg was ready to develop under previously signed agreements. He has also filed a complaint about the bribe demand in the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes of the World Bank. A hearing is scheduled in Paris later this month.
He's pushing amendments to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in Congress through H.R. 6188, which would create a private right of action under the FCPA.
Download the executive summary of Jack Grynberg's complaint to the European Commission here.
Seal This . . .
Nearly everything in the court's electronic record of James Giffen's criminal prosecution is beyond reach. Almost 200 pleadings and orders are in the docket but only a dozen can be viewed or downloaded, and the indictment isn't one of them. It's sealed tight, buttoned down, locked up. Or so it seemed just last week.
Then Cody Worthington from the District of Columbia said: "Well, apparently it’s not sealed in the case Grynberg vs. BP et al. . . it’s Exhibit 4 in that case . . .1:08-cv-00301-JDB. I just looked it up in Pacer and it’s available for anyone with an account and $2.40." Cody said he'd been keeping a copy of the Giffen indictment on his hard drive for awhile -- "collecting electronic dust." So he sent us a copy.
Sixty-five counts, seventy-five pages, hundreds of names, dates, and amounts. Thanks, Cody.
Download a copy of Exhibit 4 from the complaint in Grynberg et al v. BP P.L.C. et al (U.S. District Court District of Columbia (Washington, DC) Civil case #: 1:08-cv-00301-JDB) here.
A final note: Grynberg's suit was dismissed as to all defendants after they won orders to compel arbitration. Our original post about his civil complaint against BP, Statoil and British Gas and some of their current and former executives is here.
Foreign companies can't be blamed for wondering if they're being singled out under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The names in the FCPA-related headlines alone are enough to cause high anxiety. ABB, Siemens, BAE, DaimlerChrysler, AstraZeneca and many more. But are U.S. prosecutors really focusing too much attention on U.K., European and other foreign companies instead of American firms? Probably not, at least according to the numbers. Here's the situation. . . .
The joint venture and all its personnel shall comply in all respects with the requirements of the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Faces darken. The mood in the room goes sour. . . .
Last week we reported here about the civil suit filed in the U.S. District Court in D.C. by Colorado-based oilman Jack Grynberg, 76, against BP, Statoil and British Gas, along with some of their current or former top executives. The core allegation is that the defendants, without Grynberg's knowledge and using some of his money, bribed officials in Kazakhstan in order to win oil rights for joint ventures in which Grynberg had an interest. . . .
Last week we heard that Alba -- not the movie star Jessica but the smelter Aluminum Bahrain BSC -- had sued Alcoa for bribing Bahraini officials in exchange for supply contracts. The allegations sounded exactly like an offense under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Alba's federal lawsuit, however, is based not on the FCPA but on common law fraud and RICO -- the Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organizations Act found at 18 U.S.C. §§1961-68. So what happened to the FCPA? . . .
. . . No matter how you spin it -- and Messrs. Christie and Ashcroft have been doing plenty of that -- the appointments have the appearance of impropriety. Peel away the PR and the best you can say is that there was some obvious cronyism going on. The worst you can say is that the DOJ created a scheme by which U.S. Attorneys can extract millions of dollars from wrongdoers and funnel the money to former bosses, friends and political allies. We don't buy the sinister version for a second, but lots of people will take it as gospel. . . .
The always-helpful D & O Diary has a great post about FCPA-related civil litigation here. The topic is big news these days, with interest spurred by front-page suits brought by alleged victims of overseas public corruption -- most lately the government of Iraq, Bahrain's Alba and Denver oilman Jack Grynberg.
In the post and in a memo linked to it here, the D&O Diary moves the discussion further downstream -- to shareholder derivative suits based on FCPA-related conduct or allegations. And the subject isn't merely academic.
There's Willbros' $10.5 million settlement of a class action suit after the company restated results and upped its reserve to cover potential FCPA-related penalties; Immuncor's $2.5 million settlement of a suit claiming the company and some of its leaders misled investors about business practices and internal controls; and an ongoing securities lawsuit in which the plaintiffs claim that Nature's Sunshine Products, Inc. lacked internal controls and didn't properly account for foreign transactions.
Shareholder derivative suits based on allegations of overseas public bribery have also been filed against BAE Systems and Alcoa (see Alba above). Those cases, the memo says, illustrate how leading plaintiffs' securities lawyers are leaping in, signaling that more such suits are on the way.
For directors and officers, the potential coverage gaps in liability insurance are eye-opening. For example, D&O policies sometimes contain a so-called "commissions exclusion." It precludes coverage for losses from claims related to payments to or for an agent or employee of any foreign government. If that sounds like a prohibited payment under the FCPA, it's because the exclusion, as the memo notes, was created right after the FCPA's enactment. Then there's excluded coverage for FCPA-related fines and penalties, defense expenses for enforcement actions and . . . . well, lots more.
View our prior posts on the private right of action for FCPA-related conduct here.
Friday's coming just in time. We've used up more than our alloted pixels this week, but it wasn't our fault. There was Jack Grynberg's riveting tell-all complaint against his former big-oil partners, fresh allegations of cover-up or neglect or both in Seimens' internal investigation, and rising outrage at the impotence of the law, courtesy of BAE, Prince Bandar, Mr. Blair and the Serious Fraud Office. Added to all that was the appearance of the Buy-Now button to the right, which garnered a million clicks (if we round up to the nearest seven-digit number).
So let's take a breather with . . . a few anecdotes. These, readers will understand, are never intended to trivialize corruption, but to expose it. Nor to belittle or embarrass anyone who has to make a living in a corrupt society.
-- The Saudi customs clerk showed the man his goods inside the fenced holding area. Instead of unlocking the gate, the customs clerk rubbed his thumb and finger tips together in the universal demand for baksheesh. The man emptied his pockets on the table in front of the clerk. When the clerk saw that all the money the man carried amounted to just $36, he yelled, "What are you, English?"
-- Back in Azerbaijan, it's common knowledge that people buy juicy government posts, and that the top customs spot at the airport is purportedly worth $200,000. Job seekers do their market research to determine what the rate of return on their investment will be, given normal corruption levels during their tenure.
That's it for this busy week. But if you've got a first-hand story or a second-hand anecdote, send it along by email here (anonymity guaranteed) or as a no-name comment to this post here. We won't publish the emails or comments now, but we'll share them (without attribution) from time to time.
Last week we reported here about the civil suit filed in the U.S. District Court in D.C. by Colorado-based oilman Jack Grynberg, 76, against BP, Statoil and British Gas, along with some of their current or former top executives. The core allegation is that the defendants, without Grynberg's knowledge and using some of his money, bribed officials in Kazakhstan in order to win oil rights for joint ventures in which Grynberg had an interest.
A friend sent us a copy of Grynberg's complaint. It alleges facts which, if true, would violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Because there is no private right of action under the FCPA, we asked in our prior post whether the Department of Justice would investigate Grynberg's allegations. After reading his complaint, the answer must be yes.
What follow are excerpts from Grynberg's pleading. We've omitted the paragraph numbers that appear in the original document and we've split up some longer sections for the sake of readability. But all of the language between our lines is taken directly from the complaint.
This is a lot more text than we usually post at one go. But it's fascinating material and extremely unusual. Normally, allegations about international public corruption and violations of the FCPA come only from the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. This story, however, is told by an industry insider who's also an alleged victim.
This is a case about Statoil’s, BP’s and BG’s role -- and the role of its executive leadership – in a massive scheme involving illegal bribes paid to various top officials of the Government of Kazakhstan by several oil companies, and the scheme to cover up those bribes from public disclosure through a series of misrepresentations. There have been many victims of these bribes and their cover up – beginning with the People of Kazakhstan who have been denied their right to the benefits of the resources extracted from their land and the right to the honest services of their governmental officials of the bribes and the cover-up. The Grynberg Plaintiffs are another group of victims.
The Grynberg Plaintiffs comprise a small petroleum exploration, development and production consortium, who have engaged in honest and fully transparent business dealings in Kazakhstan and elsewhere since the late 1980’s. Plaintiffs contracted with larger oil companies to help them explore and develop Kazakhstan’s vast oil and natural gas potential. But some of the larger oil companies cut their own deal with the Kazakhstan Government to squeeze the Grynberg Plaintiffs out of Kazakhstan, using the Grynberg Plaintiffs’ confidential, proprietary, and extremely valuable, geological and geophysical information.
Settlement agreements were ultimately reached between Plaintiffs and the larger companies, whereby the larger companies bore express duties to account for net profits in the Pricaspian Sedimentary Basin of offshore and onshore northwestern Kazakhstan, also known as the Area of Mutual Interest (“AMI”), and pay Plaintiffs a portion of those net profits, and implied duties to engage honest business practices including transparent accounting and refraining from foreign corrupt practices.
This lawsuit arises from the Grynberg Plaintiffs’ discovery that Defendants have engaged in criminal bribery schemes, and in attempting to cover up those bribes, have lied to the Plaintiffs, withheld evidence, with trickery have attempted to force Plaintiffs, without their knowledge, consent or approval, to pay a portion of those illegal bribes out of the profits that the corporate Plaintiffs should have shared in, thereby harming Plaintiffs’ hard-earned and well-justified reputation as a crusader against bribery and other corruption within the petroleum industry.
Grynberg has a long history of resisting and exposing the corruption in the petroleum industry. In April of 1995, Grynberg filed a series of False Claims Act qui tam lawsuits in his capacity as a Realtor for the United States and Native Americans, including Civ. No. 95-725 (TFH), District Court, District of Columbia, U.S. ex rel. Jack J. Grynberg v. Alaska Pipeline Co. et al., and Case No. 1999MDL1293, U.S. District Court, Casper, Wyoming, Natural Gas Royalties Qui Tam Litigation. Both were filed in accordance with the False Claims Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3729 et seq. In all, Grynberg has expended in excess of twenty million dollars ($20,000,000.00) on attorney’s fees, court costs and expenses.
The above mentioned qui tam lawsuits, against 66 and subsequently enlarged to 305 corporate Defendants in the natural gas industry, challenged the mismeasurement of the volume and wrongful analysis of the heating content of natural gas causing substantial underpayments of royalties to the United States and Native Americans. Grynberg’s lawsuits allege that those Defendants are responsible for under-measuring the volume and wrongly analyzing the heating content of natural gas produced from mineral property interests owned by the United States and Native Americans, and artificially inflating net-back charges using improper valuation and transactions with non-arm’s length affiliates, to reduce royalties owed to the United States and to Native Americans.
The consolidated qui tam actions are currently before the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. Several “copy-cat” qui tam actions against the oil and natural gas industry have been filed by other whistleblowers and are progressing through the courts as well. . . .
Mr. Grynberg speaks, reads and writes fluent Russian, and was a scientific analyst in the United States Army Research and Development Command working on Soviet radioactive warfare in 1956-57. . . .
Plaintiffs Grynberg [and his companies] have engaged in the international petroleum exploration, development and production for over forty (40) years.
In the late-1980’s Grynberg, using his knowledge of Russian, personally began establishing relationships with key individuals and decision makers in the oil, natural gas and mineral exploration and production industries in the former Soviet Union, including the satellite states of Eastern Europe, and the future Caspian Sea republics, including and especially Kazakhstan. . . .
James H. Giffen (“Giffen”) was the principal and CEO of Mercator Corporation (“Mercator”), a New York corporation owned by Mr. Giffen, who had been advising the Republic of Kazakhstan throughout the 1990’s and early 2000’s in connection with various transactions related to the sale by Kazakhstan of portions of its oil and natural gas wealth.
On March 30, 2003, Giffen was arrested at Newark Airport attempting to flee the United States, served with a criminal grand jury indictment, and is now awaiting trial after posting $10,000,000.00 bail, in U.S. v. Giffen, 03-MJ-663, S.D.N.Y. (March 2003). . . . Giffen was notorious for his part of a scheme to pay off high Kazakh government officials to smooth the way for the original KCS Concession Agreement and subsequent Kazakh Government approval for the BPX/Statoil assignment of its interests to other OKIOC Concessionaires. No payment to Giffen, by any person engaged in GKOF activities, could have been for other than criminally-tainted purposes.
The Defendants BP/Statoil and BG paid their share, amounting to at least 1/7th of $84 million or $12 million of the illicit bribes attributed to Giffen’ s activities with respect to GKOF.
One prominent American oil company, Chevron, which did not participate in OKIOC consortium appears to be the exception that proves the rule. Chevron did not pay the $40 million “entrance fee,” as it has been confided by a confidential source to Plaintiff Grynberg, precisely because it was seen as an illegal bribery. Plaintiff Grynberg has signed a verification of this Complaint to confirm this information.
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 78a, 78dd-1 to 78dd-3, 78ff, the Interstate and Foreign Travel to Aid Racketeering, 18 U.S.C. § 1952, and Engaging in Monetary Transactions in Proceeds from Specified Unlawful Activities, 18 U.S.C. § 1957, not only bar this type of conduct directly but at the same time compel both the corporate Plaintiffs and Jack J. Grynberg to take independent action to disassociate themselves, in their contractual capacity, from these illegal acts by the BPX/Statoil, BG, and the individual defendants.
As a forced and innocent victim in the payment of approximately $40,500,000.00 of illegal payments to foreign government officials (a percentage of which was charged to Plaintiffs), failure to take the necessary steps to seek immediate return of these funds and disavowal in such practices might potentially expose Plaintiffs to risk and costs associated with the ongoing DOJ criminal investigations against each of the oil and gas company Defendants.
Following Giffen’s criminal indictment, Grynberg sought to obtain information concerning the details of Giffen’s arrangements with various oil companies within Kazakhstan, including BP, Statoil, BG, ENI and Chevron, both informally and in the context of settlement negotiations. Defendants have asserted attorney-client privileged information, trade secrets, contractual obligations or proprietary information for BP/Statoil and BG or other consortium members and ultimately demanding the return of documents, which, more likely than not, establish unlawful, potentially criminal conduct. Defendants will also seek to use the confidentiality agreement from the Arbitration to shield information and documents relating to their activity.
Plaintiffs have nevertheless uncovered documentary evidence that at least $500,000 has been paid by BP to Giffen for so-called “expenses” believed to constitute illegal bribe payments.
Defendants BP/Statoil, moreover, have classified approximately $40 million in unspecified expenses as “production sharing fees,” while BG has denied Plaintiffs access to audit its books where similar hidden, so-called “production sharing fees” are to be found. Standard international production sharing contracts pay production sharing fees only from actual petroleum production and not before any oil and natural gas production begins. The so-called “production sharing fees” of approximately $40 million are, more likely than not, illegal bribe payments.
Given Defendants’ intransigence and misuse of confidentiality provisions, the corporate Plaintiffs and Jack J. Grynberg are compelled to take independent action, through this Complaint and to the extent confidential as detailed in the Affidavit of Jack J. Grynberg (filed under seal).

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 § 3729
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 § 1952
 § 1957