Exxon Mobil Involved In Corrupt Oil Deals In Liberia, Investigation Reveals

Under the leadership of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, oil giant Exxon Mobil signed a $120 million deal for an oil block in Liberia that company officials knew was rife with corruption, according to a new investigation by the transparency organization Global Witness.

The deal between Exxon and Liberian company Broadway Consolidated/Peppercoast (BCP) was signed in 2013 despite Exxon’s concerns that the deal could violate U.S. anti-corruption laws. The investigation by Global Witness showed that Exxon executives were aware that the oil block they purchased was partly owned by former politicians who had taken ownership of the block through illegal means.

“Exxon knew its purchase might enrich these former politicians. The company also knew the oil block had originally been awarded to BCP after Liberia’s oil agency paid bribes,” the report said.

“Despite these corruption red flags, Exxon didn’t walk away from the deal. Instead, it engineered a plan to skirt U.S. legal exposure, using the Calgary-based Canadian Overseas Petroleum as a go-between to purchase the block,” the report continued. read more »

Whistleblowers Win in Fight With IRS

The shift leaves more money available for payments in future whistleblower cases

Two whistleblowers won a battle with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service over their share of $74 million they helped the agency to collect, marking a change that attorneys say could encourage more people to flag wrongdoing.

The dispute focused on whether tipster reward payments can include a share of money collected as criminal penalties and civil forfeitures, rather than just tax dollars the IRS would have failed to collect without whistleblowers’ help.

This week, the Department of Justice and the IRS agreed to drop an appeal of a 2016 Tax Court decision saying both categories of cash can be paid to whistleblowers. A three-judge panel at the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Thursday dismissed the case.

That result opens the door for the whistleblowers, whose names are redacted from court documents, to receive $12.9 million in addition to $4.5 million they won earlier. The shift also leaves more money available for payments in future whistleblower cases. Two whistleblowers won a battle with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service over their share of $74 million they helped the agency to collect, marking a change that attorneys say could encourage more people to flag wrongdoing. read more »

Facebook logged SMS texts and phone calls without explicitly notifying users

Users complain of phone and text data collected by the company despite never having agreed to practice

Facebook began logging the text messages and phone calls of its users before it explicitly notified them of its practice, contradicting the company’s earlier claims that “uploading this information has always been opt-in only”.

In at least one previous version of the Messenger app, Facebook only told users that the setting would enable them to “send and receive SMS in Messenger”, and presented the option to users without an obvious way to opt out: the prompt offered a big blue button reading “OK”, and a much smaller grey link to “settings”.

Nowhere in the opt-in dialogue was it made clear that text histories would be uploaded to Facebook’s servers and stored indefinitely. read more »

Shell targets former executive in Nigeria graft complaint

Royal Dutch Shell has filed a criminal complaint against a former senior employee over suspected bribes in the $390 million sale of an oilfield in Nigeria, where the company is already under investigation over a separate deal.

Dutch prosecutors confirmed they had received the complaint against Peter Robinson, a former vice president for sub-Saharan Africa. They said it would be included in an ongoing investigation into Shell and Italy’s Eni over the acquisition of a different Nigerian oilfield, known as OPL 245. read more »

Long-term care provider settles Medicaid billing claims for $10.4 mln

CenterLight Health System Inc has agreed to pay nearly $10.4 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of billing the government healthcare program Medicaid for services that were never provided to people enrolled in its long-term managed care plan.

The civil settlement was announced on Wednesday by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman and resolved allegations first raised in a whistleblower lawsuit filed under the False Claims Act by a clinical social worker. read more »