Last week, a sweeping investigative report published by The Huffington Post and Fairfax Media put a little known Monaco-based company, Unaoil, at the center of a wide-ranging bribery scandal that involved dozens of corporate giants from around the world. The article calls it the “world’s biggest bribe scandal.”
After spending months investigating and combing through vast troves of emails and internal documents, The Huffington Post and Fairfax Media published a bombshell report on the bribery empire setup by Unaoil, a company based in Monaco. The report alleges that “Unaoil and its subcontractors bribed foreign officials to help major multinational corporations win contracts” in a variety of countries including Iraq, Kazakhstan, Iran, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and many more countries in Africa, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union.
Unaoil is not a household name, but the family-run company from Monaco, according to thousands of internal documents reviewed by the report’s authors, worked to win contracts for many regulars in the oil and gas industry, including Halliburton, KBR, Rolls-Royce, Samsung, Honeywell, FMC Technologies, Hyundai, and many more.
The publication of the report, putting Unaoil at the very center of a massive international bribery ring, was met with head scratching by many energy analysts. Despite its seemingly crucial role in so many oil and gas contracts awarded around the world, very few have heard of the company.
The alleged operation was relatively straightforward. The clients – exploration companies, construction and engineering firms, and oilfield service contractors – would pay Unaoil large sums, and Unaoil would secure contracts for them by bribing government officials in the country of interest. Many of Unaoil’s clients claim that they did not know that Unaoil was bribing government officials on their behalf, but the report asserts that some were either willfully blind or were fully aware of the corruption.
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