We haven’t heard any more from Ian Taylor’s lawyers yet. But in a surprising development never previously observed on the internet, his attempt to silence various pro-independence voices appears to have resulted in people digging deeper into the affairs of Vitol, the oil-trading company of which he’s been Chief Executive since 1995.

One particularly interesting revelation that we don’t think was covered in any of the earlier articles relates to the company’s conduct in the Republic of the Congo, where they got up to shenanigans a little shadier than simply drinking all the Um Bongo.

The following is an extract from Hansard (the official record of the UK Parliament) in 2009, discovered by the Yes campaign’s Kevin Pringle. For full background you can read the entire piece here, but the paragraphs below comprise the section dealing with Vitol. All emphases are ours.

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“Our internal deal-churning factory”: active complicity in the offshore marketing scheme by a UK-registered international oil trader?



64. According to estimates by Kensington, a creditor of Congo, since 2002, international oil trader Vitol has purchased nearly US$3 billion of oil from Congo. Evidence and testimony from the Nordic Hawk case and subsequent cross-examination of Ike Nwobodo, the trader at the centre of the Sphynx marketing scheme, suggest that Vitol companies registered in the UK, and top Vitol employees based in London actively assisted Congo, post the November 2005 judgment, to maintain its opaque offshore marketing scam by creating two purpose-built shell vehicles (Vitol Bahrain and Global Oil Trading Mauritius) to buy oil.

65. Kensington took out several court actions against Vitol in Geneva and London in 2006-07 on the basis that it was helping Congo to avoid paying its creditors. On 26 May 2006, a UK High Court judgment found in Kensington’s favour: “there is evidence that Vitol Group (that is, Vitol Broking, Vitol Services, Vitol SA and other companies in the Vitol Group) […] has played a role and a significant role in the dishonest judgment-proofing scheme”.

The judgment refers to documentary evidence including emails between Vitol employees and Ike Nwobodo referring to the setting up of shell companies by the Vitol Group to buy from a new Gokana offshore vehicle, Phenicia: “[Vitol] agreed to deal with Phenicia without question and promptly changed its own practice by creating a new vehicle through which to buy the Congo’s oil, Global Oil Trader Mauritius (`GOTM’)”.

66. In one particular email of 21 February 2006 to Nwobodo, a Vitol employee, Giles Chautard, refers to routing offshore sales through “our internal deal churning factory here”. The judge finds that “structuring the oil sales with the use of new companies to replace earlier entities, Mr Chautard [a Vitol oil trader] and his colleague Mr Lambrosa [Chief financial officer of the Vitol Group], and thus the Vitol UK Companies and the Vitol Group, must have appreciated that the purpose of using these vehicles was in order to prevent detection by the Congo’s judgment creditors of the oil sales”.

Payments made by Vitol to Congolese officials via offshore vehicles?



67. What is of even greater concern to Global Witness are allegations made by Kensington against Vitol that corrupt payments were made via a Vitol-owned offshore vehicle called Peakville into the Hong Kong bank account of Long Beach Limited, the Anguilla shell company belonging to the President of Congo’s son and head of the marketing branch of SNPC, Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso.

68. On 15 January 2007, Don Shwarzkopf, a consultant for Kensington, alleged in an affidavit that:

“[T]here appear to be only two credible alternative explanations for the payments by Peakville and Vitol SA into the Long Beach account. Either these constitute monies paid to and held by Congo for its own convenience, to be hidden from creditors ….; or, put candidly, they are corrupt kickbacks or rake-offs in return for the placing of valuable business with Vitol ….”

69. If Kensington’s allegations are correct—this accusation was not finally resolved due to Kensington settling its dispute with Congo—then it raises further disturbing questions regarding the use of offshore sales structures.

70. On 7 November 07 three appeals by Vitol were dismissed in the UK High Court arising out of various proceedings brought by Kensington. Two of the appeals related to restraining orders on oil purchases from Congo or orders to disclose information about specific sales, while the third related to a court order for the UK Vitol companies and Vitol employees “to disclose certain information relating to payments said to have been made in Hong Kong by or on behalf of Vitol S.A. to employees or representatives of the Congo by way of bribes”.

The Vitol companies and employees had resisted disclosure of information related to these payments by claiming privilege against self-incrimination under the Fraud Act, which applies when “there are real grounds for thinking that the information [the person] is being asked to provide, or the documents he is being asked to disclose, are such as would tend to incriminate him”.

71. The Appeal hearing thus upheld the findings of Justice Gross in July 2007, who characterized Vitol’s case as follows:

“Faced with such accusations, an obvious response of a reputable trader might well involve an indignant root and branch factual refutation of the allegations in question, perhaps coupled with an expressed willingness to assist the judgment creditor so far as it was able to do so. That, however, is not the stance adopted by the Third Parties [Vitol]. To the contrary, while resolutely making no admissions to any of the allegations made by Mr. Schwarzkopf, the entire thrust of the Third Parties’ case is that those allegations could, if proved, amount to criminal conduct under the laws of this country. They go on to assert the privilege against self-incrimination pursuant to section 14 of the Civil Evidence Act 1968″.

72. Kensington has now reached a settlement of its debts with Congo, so the Vitol case has effectively been shelved. However, given the UK courts found that Vitol’s UK-registered and headquartered companies, and UK employees, had aided Congo to evade a UK court judgement and move money offshore to avoid seizure by creditors, and given Kensington’s allegations of corrupt kickbacks combined with the fact that Vitol and its employees resisted testifying by claiming privilege against self-incrimination on the grounds that “those allegations could, if proved, amount to criminal conduct under the laws of this country”, Global Witness believes that this case should be investigated further by the UK authorities.

73. This case again reveals evidence of public officials, with the aid of UK-registered companies, making use of offshore structures to deliberately obscure transactions of state oil, thus evading judgments by UK courts and possibly facilitating the diversion public revenues into private hands.

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Labour MPs have previously described Mr Taylor’s donations to the Conservative Party as “dirty money” and called for the Tories to return it. We keenly await clarity on whether that remains the case, or whether they consider Mr Taylor’s cash to have been magically cleaned up in some way since September 2012.