BB Naft shareholder Wael Bassatne told El Nuevo Herald that his company did not violate the U.S. embargo because it is not registered and does no business in the United States. Formed in the 1960s, the group's activities span six continents. Erni was most recently. Global Policy Forum, a non-government agency that monitors the work of the United Nations, also included BB Energy in a list of beneficiaries of the so-called oil bribes distributed by Saddam Hussein to recruit international support for weakening U.N. and other economic sanctions against Iraq. In 2015, BB Energy won Ecuadoran contracts for more than three million barrels of naphtha, a petroleum distillate. (Credit: Philippe Hage Boutros/OLJ). Billions of dollars have been siphoned off annually into political largesse and party war chests. Although Labour can now pick up on details of outrageous behaviour, it never offered a different strategy to that which put people before profits during the horror of the pandemic. The company did not respond to a request for comment. The CEEC was set up after H&F Council declared a climate and ecological emergency in July 2019. When he was appointed, Hayes said he would advise the company on strategic plans in the context of changes in the worldwide energy market. SECURITYIn Tunis, Mawlawi reassures Saudi counterpart on Lebanons continuing fight against drug trafficking, DIPLOMACY Belgium PM tells Iranian leader to free aid worker, PRIVACY Moroccan activists join WhatsApp suit over Pegasus spyware, Support L'Orient Today with a digital subscription starting $1. This is an actual Pandoras box that goes far beyond the chapter currently in the hands of the judiciary, he said. Please detail the London Energy Project's revenue received, costs incurred and breakdown for both (ie where money was received from and how it was spent) for financial years 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18, 2018/19 and budget for 2019/20. Last month he and other Tory MPs called for fracking to resume. Multimillionaire donors seem almost guaranteed a peerage, according to a report by the Open Democracy thinktank and the Times newspaper. Lucia Kassai and . A convoluted email by a Cuban lawyer for Tecnica Hidraulica, registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), showed all its shares were held by Cubas Tcnica Hidrulica, S.A. At BB Energy, we are constantly evolving in order to meet new challenges, while developing our personnel to ensure a competitive edge. Lebanese judicial sources told Daraj that the investigation will not be limited to the technical specifications of fuel, but will also include the commissions Sonatrach is making. The Liberal Democrats have ennobled five donors and the Labour Party, two. Add your voice to our engaged subscriber community and be part of the change. BBE has consolidated experience in trading, operations, chartering, logistics, storage, refining, and financing, trading in excess of 40 million metric tonnes (MT) of crude oil, petroleum product, and gas in 2021. The Public Prosecution Office began investigating them to the backdrop of the ongoing debate, in Lebanon, over spoiled fuel bought by the electricity company from the Algerian oil company, Sonatrach, which ranked thirteenth in the ranking of oil companies in the world. He failed on a number of occasions to declare those interests. 2022 LOrient-Le Jour. During his time as energy minister, Hayes caused controversy by refusing to support any further expansion to onshore wind power, describing wind turbines as a terrible intrusion. One Bloomberg report showed BB Energy had $10 billion in revenues in 2012. Beefing up global enforcement around corruption The Lincolnshire MP recently criticised the governments plan to bring forward a ban on selling new petrol and diesel cars, saying that a delay would allow fossil fuels to become even cleaner. However, he expressed regret that the court system had not dug deeper. Above all, the government remains ahead in the opinion polls even though it presides over one of the worst death rates in the world. The subsidiary subcontracted the deal to two private companies BB Energy, owned by the Bassatne family, and, beginning in 2017, Dubai-based ZR Energy DMCC, owned by Ibrahim Zaouk. As working class people suffered mass deaths during the first phases of the Covid pandemic, Tory MPs and their mates filled their bank accounts. Both Mr. Rahmeh and ZR Group have been subjected to a politically motivated witch-hunt underpinned by a campaign to distract from Lebanons political failings. Public debt could rise to 289% of GDP by the end of the century if climate change is left unchecked, it said. Image: Cables of the electric generators in the Lebanese capital BeirutCredit: ANWAR AMRO/AFP via Getty Images, except East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa. In another document, the lawyer Kabalan instructed Mossack Fonseca in 2005 to issue new shares for BB Naft because the originals had been sold to BB Energy Holdings N.V., a Curacao-based company publicly listed as part of the BB Energy group. On April 15, Wadih Akl, a lawyer affiliated with the Free Patriotic Movement, filed a complaint to the Mount Lebanon public prosecutors office in which he alleged that a fuel quality report for one of the tankers had been forged. Security agencies have warned against gangs attempting to kidnap unaccompanied children. However, the criminal court announced his innocence to the Algeria Judicial Council, which was concerned with the ongoing investigations in the second Sonatrach case. A Reuters news agency report shows that the mother company, BB Energy, was still sending petroleum to Syria in 2011. It is up to the criminal court to render a decision on the merits of the case. The family controls BB Energy, a conglomerate founded in Lebanon in 1937 that buys and sells 16 million metric tons of crude and derivatives each year. State-run Bangladesh Petroleum Corp., or BPC, has awarded the building contract to a consortium of Japan's Marubeni Corp., Vitol Asia Pte. This comes on top of his standard MP salary of 81,932. In an email, an official wrote that Matt Hancock, health secretary at the time, would send a letter to universities asking for loans of the various things we need. Sabradell was the sole owner of Resimevis Ltd, a Mossack Fonseca client since 1995 dedicated to general commerce of medical products and equipment., Whats more, a 2015 email indicated that the sole purpose of Curtdale Investments Ltd., registered in the British Virgin Islands, was to hold the shares of Ardpoint Company Inc., which in turn owned Altabana S.L. Word in the news: black rain Children love it, businesses hate it Pody Lui from BBC Hong Kong explains the rain warning system, and why black rain warnings are taken so seriously. The Swiss lawyer did not respond to El Nuevo Herald requests for comments on this story. BB Energy, which has a strong presence in Arab and African markets (see here ), has been embroiled in a legal spat in recent months with Saudi-Ethiopian businessman Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi. Yes! This is ostensibly because it was hard for the judiciary to find evidence linking ZR Energy DDMC and ZR Group Holding SAL, despite the testimonies collected by Mansour. After the return of Ould Kaddour to Sonatrach as its general manager in April 2017, it was not long before he imposed yet another intermediary besides Baha Bassatne. The Committee on Standards suggested Paterson should just be suspended from the Commons for 30 days. A former Tory Party chairman told The Sunday Times, Once you pay your 3 million, you get your peerage.. And the cosy dinners, the freebie trips and holidays, the football match tickets and the fat extra salaries to deliver for corporations must all go. Russia has publicly said the U.S. sanctions are illegal and it would work with Venezuela to weather them. Other leaked Mossack Fonseca documents show the interwoven complex of offshore companies created by the Cuban government to import and export goods and invest funds abroad with the assistance of the Panamanian law firm. The Web page of the Cuba-Lebanon Businessmens Council lists a Riad Bassatne as a member of its board of directors and describes him as president of BB Naft Trading and member of the board of directors of BB Energy., Wael Bassatne nevertheless insisted that there are no commercial or financial relations between BB Naft Trading S.A. and the BB Energy Group. He added that BB Nafts activities in Cuba included the sale of spare parts and agricultural machinery.. There is no overlap of ownership or management between the two companies, a representative of ZR Energy DMCC told Le Commerce du Levant. He said, There is a will to hold those involved in the scandal accountable.. 11:07 AM | 31 Jan, 2023 . Ukraine's track record of massive corruption in energy is a sadly familiar story. The BVI company was dissolved in 2015. It has since been renewed four times. This was in addition to his 49,140 directors salary. To enjoy unlimited access to all LOrient Today content, subscribe. The allegations did not prevent the Energy Ministry from awarding it a spot fuel import contract in January to partially fill the gap created by the end of the contract with Sonatrach, after the latter did not renew the deal. The governments own Climate Change Committee warned in March that there is little, if any, room for increased fossil gas consumption if the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement are to be met. From the beginning of the pandemic, Labour leader Keir Starmer spent nearly all his time agreeing with Boris Johnson in a show of national unity. Such transactions do not lead to any consequent payment to PDVSA and do not violate U.S. sanctions or policies.. The Panama Papers show Dupont-Willemin as a director of a total of 49 offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands, five in Panama and two each in the Bahamas and Seychelles islands. Entity: B.B. Parliament is an unrepresentative, unaccountable front that covers for the real relations of power. Peter Quinter, an expert on U.S. embargo laws and former head of the International Law section of the Florida Bar Association, said the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba generally bars a company with a U.S. presence from doing business with Cuba directly or indirectly through an offshore branch, for example. Records of a meeting in Dubai in March of 2011 reflect a decision to significantly reduce the capital of BB Naft, held by BB Energy Holdings NV., from $8 million to $1.050 million. Issues with the quality of the fuel imported to Lebanon were uncovered by Yahya Mawlud, the director of Middle East Power, which runs turbines at the Zouk and Jiyyeh power plants. Miramar Playa. But the stench of corruption was too much. There seems to be a tendency to prosecute managers and employees of the Lebanese Al-Zahrani Electricity Company as accomplices and facilitators of these operations; and while ZR Energys owners are being interrogated, the investigations will expand to reach the date of signing the contract with the Algerian company in 2005. A letter sent in 1998 by a Mossack Fonseca employee to the international trade office at state-run Petroecuador referred to documents sent by BB Naft required to register the company. A 2005 fax also points to an initial contact with the Venezuelan governments Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). Standards commissioner Kathryn Stone has carried out three investigations into Johnson in the past three years. A scandal over the import of sub-standard quality fuel into Lebanon has seen some two-dozen people arrested, two fuel tankers seized and the offices of two major fuel traders raided and sealed off amid ongoing investigations. Guillermo Faustino Rodrguez Lpez-Calleja also appears as the representative of seven foreign companies registered in Cuba: Acemex Management Company Limited; Caroil Transport Marine Limited; Nautilus Shipping Overseas Corp.; Northsouth Maritime Company Limited; Gulf Lake Enterprises Ltd.; Acando Shipping Co. Ltd.; and Gilmar Project Finance Establishment. . This evolutionary approach not only applies to our services, but also our people. He receives a salary of 25,000 a year. 2. Former prime minister Theresa May has made 842,526 giving paid speeches since March 2020. BB Energy is one of the world's leading independent energy trading companies. Our operations in these products are global and we use our storage and logistics for blending and optimising timely deliveries to fulfil customer requirements. MP and former Tory energy minister John Hayes has been paid 150,000 by oil firm BB Energy over three years. 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