The allegations did not prevent the Energy Ministry from awarding it a spot fuel import contract in January to partially fill the gap created by the end of the contract with Sonatrach, after the latter did not renew the deal. After they didn't show up for questioning, reports suggested Hleiss and Rahme were being protected by Marada Movement leader Sleiman Frangieh. Security agencies have warned against gangs attempting to kidnap unaccompanied children. The contract may be summarized as follows: Sonatrach will give its name to the shipments of Baha Bassatne, who buys fuel from the Swiss company Vitol, for 3.5 dollars per metric ton, while he makes 25 dollars as profit in his deals with the end customer in Lebanon. In 2003, for example, BB Naft agreed to guarantee and meet the obligations of a loan obtained by BB Energy (Asia) Pte Ltd. from the Standard Chartered Bank of Singapore. What's more, one of the Algerian state-owned energy firm's subsidiaries has found itself in the crosshairs of a Lebanese court. I feel they are trying to bury this issue in the courts by stopping at mid-level employees, Yacoubian said. Former prime minister Theresa May has made 842,526 giving paid speeches since March 2020. Tory whips threatened MPs with the loss of local funding unless they fell into line. The company said it saved Ghana over $2.8million when it sold the crude to the firm at a discount of $2 instead of the normal $5 a barrel. By. Fuel poverty and energy efficiency are inevitably linked, the less efficient a property is the costlier it is to heat. Registered in: Panama Linked countries: Cuba Agent: Mossack Fonseca Search in: The Panama Papers data is current through 2015 read more Incorporated: 21-DEC-1984 Status: Active Connections: Linkurious and Neo4j Officer (3) Intermediary (1) Explore more from Panama Papers Mossack Fonseca The players Sonatrach signed the contract while Ali ibn-Buzeid was the manager of the London branch, and Muhammad Shawki Rahhal was the marketing manager, who had been accused in the first Sonatrach lawsuit. As the pandemic highlighted, it is a mechanism for the enrichment of the tiny elite of business people who have an inside track to ministers and top civil servants. Procs du fuel dfectueux : 22 personnes sur le banc des accuss. Forgery, using counterfeit documents, bribery, fraud and professional misconduct these are the charges brought against 22 people and entities following a pretrial investigation into a case of. The upgrade of the Number 10 flat is now expected to be the subject of another inquiry. The Lebanease newspaper, Al-Akhbar, published a tweet by the Former Energy Minister, Nada Boustani, in which she spoke of ministerial reports confirming the poor quality of fuel and demanding to go on with punitive measures against the suppliers. It showed that fuel was of acceptable quality, when another test showed it was not. When MPs have lucrative side-jobs for private firms it raises questions over whose interests they are serving. If you have any queries about republishing please contact us. Rahmeh, like the other defendants, presented preemptory defenses during the pretrial phase, which the judiciary accepted, except related to the charge of bribery, which it upheld. On April 15, Wadih Akl, a lawyer affiliated with the Free Patriotic Movement, filed a complaint to the Mount Lebanon public prosecutors office in which he alleged that a fuel quality report for one of the tankers had been forged. Such transactions do not lead to any consequent payment to PDVSA and do not violate U.S. sanctions or policies.. Parliament is an unrepresentative, unaccountable front that covers for the real relations of power. The justification of the Sonatrach executives for adopting this type of contract (Fronting), which is renewed every three years, was the position of the intermediary in the Lebanese market, in addition to his taking all the risks related to the deals. Our experienced traders are situated in our offices throughout the globe; industry specialists who count gas, crude oil, light and middle distillates, as well as bitumen, as their specialities. The Web page of the Cuba-Lebanon Businessmens Council lists a Riad Bassatne as a member of its board of directors and describes him as president of BB Naft Trading and member of the board of directors of BB Energy., Wael Bassatne nevertheless insisted that there are no commercial or financial relations between BB Naft Trading S.A. and the BB Energy Group. He added that BB Nafts activities in Cuba included the sale of spare parts and agricultural machinery.. BB Energy has trading hubs in the UAE, the U.K., the US, and Singapore. Both Mr. Rahmeh and ZR Group have been subjected to a politically motivated witch-hunt underpinned by a campaign to distract from Lebanons political failings. Corruption policy, and our KYC and recruitment procedures to support our stance that we will not The Venezuelan companys shipping schedules showed that Reliance was loading a cargo from PDVSA as recently as April 20. The contents of the contract were never known to the Lebanese people, despite costing the treasury billions of dollars. He failed on a number of occasions to declare those interests. Companies with Cuban capital or activities on the island. Few traders had room to receive physical barrels at Cushing. BB Energy Trading Ltd. BB House 12-14 Ansdell Street London W8 5BN United Kingdom T: +44 20 7938 0500 F: +44 20 7938 0501 www.bbenergy.com Page 1 of 2 ANTI-SLAVERY STATEMENT . Much of the Mossack Fonseca correspondence on those companies involves updates of company registries and boards of directors, payment of fees and requests for letters of financial status required to open bank accounts or sign contracts. The new certificates, for 800 shares, were to be issued in the names of 10 members of the Bassatne family, including 160 shares for Riad Bassatne. The women pushing boundaries in Pakistans rural milk marketIn rural Pakistan women milk cows, but male relatives take the milk to male-run collection centres. At BB Energy, we are constantly evolving in order to meet new challenges, while developing our personnel to ensure a competitive edge. The Panama Papers, documents leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and shared with the McClatchy Washington Bureau, Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, among others, contain hundreds of thousands of pages from the files of Mossack Fonseca, a Panama law firm with offices in 33 other countries. Copyright 2023 BB Energy. BBE maintains . Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg. Shuja Malik of BBC Urdu visited a village where women have been hired to work in the milk centre. and Promotora de Cigarros S.L., two companies registered in Spain and involved in the sale of Cuban cigars. Mossack Fonseca was listed as the registered agent for most of the companies. Digital Subscription $1,909 Premium Subscription $3,179 Best Value I think we have more confidence in what didnt happen than what did.. The leaked documents also show that Guillermo Faustino Rodrguez Lpez-Calleja, brother of Gen. Luis Alberto Rodrguez Lpez-Calleja, was appointed in 1999 as a director of Pescatlan S.A., a company incorporated by Mossack Fonseca in the British Virgin Islands in 1991 with an initial capital of $50,000. (Credit: Philippe Hage Boutros/OLJ). Reliance has said that in September 2012 it signed a 15-year deal to purchase up to 400,000 barrels a day of heavy crude from PDVSA. Four high-level suspects, including Hleiss, and Teddy Rahme and Ibrahim al-Zouk of ZR Energy, did not respond to court summons and arrest warrants were issued for them. During his time as energy minister, Hayes caused controversy by refusing to support any further expansion to onshore wind power, describing wind turbines as a terrible intrusion. After the return of Ould Kaddour to Sonatrach as its general manager in April 2017, it was not long before he imposed yet another intermediary besides Baha Bassatne. BB Energy's global network of middle distillates comprises of a wide range of products, most prominently jet, kerosene, diesel and heating oil. The Swiss lawyer did not respond to El Nuevo Herald requests for comments on this story. Word in the news: black rain Children love it, businesses hate it Pody Lui from BBC Hong Kong explains the rain warning system, and why black rain warnings are taken so seriously. With its economy reeling from years of recession and a sharp decline in oil production, Venezuela was already struggling to finance imports and government spending before Washington imposed tough restrictions on PDVSA in January. Yahya Mawloud, the operations manager of Middle East Power, the company operating the reciprocating engines installed in Zouk and Jiyyeh where the tainted fuel was destined for, had sounded the alarm about the poor quality of fuel in March 2020. The Cuban government also hid its control of offshore companies by creating still other limited liability companies whose sole objective was to appear in registries as owners of the offshore companies and disguise Cubas hand in them. Subscribe or upgrade your current MEED.com package to support your strategic planning with the MENA region's best source of business information. Reliance said in its statement its purchases of Venezuelan oil from Rosneft do not lead to any payments to PDVSA. Add your voice to our engaged subscriber community and be part of the change. Formed in the 1960s, the group's activities span six continents. Instead, investigations have revealed that at least two companies owned by Lebanese businessmen, BB Energy and ZR Energy, were bringing in the fuel. Ltd. and Singapore-registered PowerCo International Pte. Which groups shape the stories we see in the press; which voices are silenced, and why? Landlords are eligible for up 5,000 to cover two thirds of energy efficiency work. One Bloomberg report showed BB Energy. The need for transparency in that case is even more pressing given the fact that the director of the Oil Installations, Sarkis Hleiss, is at the center of investigations into the fuel import scandal. Mansour had initially leveled the same accusations against the Lebanese company ZR Group Holding SAL and issued an arrest warrant for its owner, Teddy Rahmeh, which was withdrawn after bail was posted. He was one of the witnesses in the pretrial investigation. It held all the shares of Euro Foods Ltd., which was registered in the Bahamas and in turn represented ALIMPORT. Little is known inside the island about the Cuban governments companies abroad, but Havana economist Omar Everleny wrote in the early 2000s that there were more than 100 entities with the participation of Cuban capital, founded as mixed [state-private] companies or as branches of companies based on the island operating abroad in areas such as construction, agriculture, food, medicine, mining, finance and science., Everleny, recently fired from the University of Havanas Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy, noted the paradox that a country that lacks the capital for its own development has invested in other countries. The motive, he speculated, is the U.S. embargo that forced the establishment of a network of companies around the world to warehouse and market products from the sea, among them lobsters and shrimp., Today the export of products from the fishing industry is carried out through those companies, he said, adding that Cuban officials also created an international network of companies to warehouse and sell the famous Cuban cigars.. This story was originally published June 7, 2016, 10:06 AM. Sonatrach has been involved in at least two major corruption cases in the past decade, both of which involved the payment of bribes to company employees and officials. Tory MP Owen Paterson announced his resignation last week following revelations of his shameless lobbying for big businesses. BB Naft does not appear, however, among the subsidiaries listed on BB Energys Web site. The offer letter, seen by Reuters with its date redacted, said that Rosneft had agreed with PDVSA to pay BB Energy's $26 million debt to the Venezuelan state oil company and then to seek. Please detail the London Energy Project's revenue received, costs incurred and breakdown for both (ie where money was received from and how it was spent) for financial years 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18, 2018/19 and budget for 2019/20. Judge Aoun has charged 12 people in the case, including Electricite du Liban director-general Kamal Hayek for negligence of duty, and Hleiss and director of oil at the energy ministry Aurore Feghali for bribes and negligence of duty. He said, There is a will to hold those involved in the scandal accountable.. However, the dates for the first court hearings, which will be open to the public, have yet to be announced. For over five decades we have been applying our depth of specialist experience to oil refining, logistics, storage and financing across the world. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to submit the form, - | 01.03.2023. Corruption takes many forms, ranging from grand corruption - the capture of high office of government by elites and the uses of these offices for private gain - to "petty" corruption - the use of bribes or other The MP has also drawn comparisons between climate activism and radical Islam, writing: Radical Islam, Black Lives Matter and the Extinction Rebellion are cultural not economic movements which want to disown our collective past and so transform our very way of life and so dictate the future.. Its official address is the same as that of BB Energy Trading: 140 Brompton Rd., London, SW3 1HY, United Kingdom. A convoluted email by a Cuban lawyer for Tecnica Hidraulica, registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), showed all its shares were held by Cubas Tcnica Hidrulica, S.A. Somebody did and bedlam ensued. 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