REVIEW & OUTLOOK
March 26, 2008
A senior executive at TNK-BP told us a few months ago that the oil company was “a poster child” for foreign investment in Russia. So it is turning out to be, only not in the way that he intended.
Blessed by Vladimir Putin at its creation in 2003, BP’s Russian joint venture is now getting the standard Kremlin treatment. Yesterday a “bureaucratic” visa problem forced the British company to send home 148 expatriate workers. Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry launched a “tax evasion” probe into a TNK-BP unit. And last week, the (renamed) KGB raided the oil company’s Moscow offices and arrested a Russian employee for “industrial espionage.”
How subtle. Whatever is behind the shakedown of the only large oil company partly owned by foreigners, recent history suggests that visa snafus, back taxes and “espionage” have nothing to do with it. Maybe the Kremlin wants TNK-BP to lower the price on the large Siberian gas field the company was pressured last year to sell to state monopolist Gazprom. Or perhaps it’s escalating a diplomatic war with Britain dating back to the 2006 assassination of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko.
The likelier explanation is that Mr. Putin is kneecapping another private oil company to secure the goodies for his cronies. Kremlin wolves swallowed whole Russia’s largest major, Yukos, and sent its boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky to rot in a Siberian jail. “Tax evasion” was the excuse. A year ago, Royal Dutch Shell got into trouble for “environmental” infractions and was forced to sell half its oil development on Sakhalin Island to Gazprom. TNK-BP, Russia’s fourth-largest oil producer, is a tasty prize.
In six weeks, Gazprom Chairman Dmitry Medvedev takes over the nation’s presidency from mentor Mr. Putin, who’ll become Prime Minister. The TNK-BP case sends a useful reminder: Nothing is likely to change.
See all of today’s editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120648029104863413.html
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
