COMMENT BY A KNOWLEDGEABLE SOURCE ON SHELL SPONSORED ALCOHOL FOR THE GARDA: CHRISTMAS GIFT OR BRIBE?
John
Shell have a rule that gifts are acceptable up to a certain value. I don’t know the current figure, but 100 Euros would probably be about right.
300 garda times 100 Euros = 30,000 Euros, so if OSSL only spent 29,500 Euros that would mean that they were 1 Euro below the limit at which the gift would have been a bribe and hence unacceptable. So Shell can probably hold their hands on their hearts and say that they did not (according to their own definition) bribe the garda. Hence rejection rather than denial.
However, I believe that there is another stipulation which is that the gift must be consumed at a single sitting. I have no doubt that it is possible to consume 100 Euros worth of good wine or spirits at a single sitting, and I don’t know the price of alcohol in Ireland, but it seems that the garda involved would have needed to be very thirsty!
The real crime here is that OSSL were apparently asked to do something, and Shell then refused to pay for the service that they had requested. Whether or not the alcohol was a bribe to the garda or was simply a Christmas gift is open to debate, but the ethics of treating a small supplier in the manner that Shell seem to have done seems unbelievably high handed and stupid.
Answer to one question:
Here’s a website which gives a partial answer:
http://www.obrienswine.ie/spirits/spirits/irish-whiskey.html?p=1
100 Euros would seem to be about right for a 6-bottle case of wine or spirits, as described by the newspaper editor who returned his “giftâ€. But it’s hard to imagine how this could have been consumed at a single sitting;
300 6-bottle cases would also correspond to about 3 tons and even with two trips would have exceeded the permitted load of a transit van!
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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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