Tue 4 Jun 2019, 06:36 AM | Posted by editor
LETTER from Mark Langabeer, Newton Abbot Labour Party (personal capacity)
Panorama’s investigative reporter, Mayeni Jones, researches corruption involving the President of Senegal, a businessman and the oil giant, BP. The story begins with the President of Senegal awarding permits for oil and gas exploration to a company largely owned by a businessman called Frank Timis. It emerges that the brother of the President, Macky Sall was on the company’s payroll, on the proviso that Petro-tin, owned by Timis, won the contract.
Timis has a criminal record for drug-dealing during the 90s in Romania. In 2017, despite a luxury lifestyle, he paid the princely sum of £35 tax for the whole year. His company had neither the knowledge nor finances to drill for oil and gas. Enter a company called Kosmos, a US-based energy company that successfully finds large deposits of gas.
BP, despite knowledge of Timis’s dodgy past, buy the company, which involves royalties over ten years that pass straight to Timis and his associates. The amount is estimated at £10 billion. A former Wealth Manager for Timis described him as “corrupt and unsuitable to conduct business of this kind”. Mayeni Jones believes that Timis has pocketed £10 billion which should have gone to the Senegalese people.
I think that Timis should be jailed, the Senegalese should replace their President and put him and his brother on trial. Last but not least, an incoming Labour Government should renationalize BP to ensure their conduct is truly ethical.
Watch the programme on BBC i-player:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005q26
