Corporate Crime File: Oil Giant BP Faces Multiple Charges

BP has spent millions of dollars branding itself as kinder, gentler and more socially conscious than its competitors. In 1997, it announced that it would become the world's first "green" energy company, a move that the firm followed up by dutifully changing the color scheme in their signage to a rather attractive shade of green.

Of course, in the energy biz, social responsibility is hard to come by, and the firm's deeds have not exactly matched its rhetoric; corporate watchdogs named the firm one of the "ten worst corporations in 2001 and again last year based on its human rights and environmental records.

The company has been under criminal investigation for its role in a toxic spill in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, it's been accused of hiring right-wing paramilitary killers in Colombia and criticized for a host of issues surrounding the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, which environmentalist Hannah Ellis described thusly:

BP is the lead shareholder in the 1,100-mile long oil pipeline, which runs from Baku, Azerbaijan, through Georgia to the Turkish seaport of Ceyhan. In addition to opening up an alternative supply to the US (which has long been in search of an oil source outside the Middle East), the project has led to allegations of human rights abuses, sparked regional conflict, and deprived local people of their livelihoods and land. By 2010, The pipeline is scheduled to deliver an estimated one million barrels of oil a day, predominantly to the already saturated Western markets.

The pipeline legal agreements also give BP effective governing power over a strip of land 1,750 miles long, where the company will likely override all national environmental, social, human rights laws for the next 40 years.

In August, the Chicago Tribune reported that BP, the nation's 100th largest political campaign donor, had received an exemption from EPA rules that would allow it to increase the amount of ammonia and toxic sludge it dumps in Lake Michigan from its Whiting, Indiana refinery. The plant was already among the lake's leading industrial polluters, and the move prompted the Chicago Sun-Times to call for a boycott, saying: "At this point, the only clear message BP is sending is that it wants to have its cake and eat it too. BP executives want their company to be known as the greenest -- as suggested by its logo, meant to resemble a sunflower and show its commitment to the environment. But they also want to dump in our lakes. They can't have it both ways…"

On Tuesday, the company announced that its 3rd quarter profits were down by 45 percent. BP also announced this week that it would cut about a sixth of the workforce in its North Sea oil biz. The firm's stock rose slightly, however, because the news was actually not as bad as analysts had projected.

But if traders thought the firm's troubles were all in the past, they got a surprise this week, as two new stories of malfeasance came out about the energy giant, adding to its already long corporate-crime rap-sheet.

U.S. to Seek Indictments of Ex-BP Traders: Reports

Reuters

The U.S. Justice Department is expected to seek indictments of up to four former BP Plc traders as early as Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition on Wednesday.

The indictments are expected in federal district court in Chicago, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the case.

BP could not be reached for immediate comment.

The indictments are expected to be brought against former members of BP's propane-trading desk, and will come on the same day that the Justice Department and federal market and environmental regulators are expected to announce that BP has agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle criminal and civil probes into a fatal refinery explosion and alleged market manipulation, the Journal said.