When Lord Browne resigned as BP chief executive earlier this month after lying to the courts during a failed attempt to gag The Mail on Sunday, his supporters paid tribute to the buccaneering way he built the company into a global oil giant. A former BP worker has told how he threw champagne-fuelled sex parties to help secure lucrative international oil contracts.
The company also worked with MI6 agents to help bring about changes in foreign governments, according to an astonishing account of life inside the oil giant. He also claims that Home Secretary John Reid was arrested at gunpoint on a BP-funded foreign trip for being out on the streets after a military curfew had been imposed. Most of the money was spent on new offices, hiring staff in London and the Azerbaijan capital Baku — including paying generous start-up bonuses — public-relations work and the chartering of corporate jets.
The hospitality continued in London, where he hired prostitutes to entertain visiting Azerbaijanis. According to the former oil worker, he would fly dignitaries from Baku to London, put them up at The Savoy, and take them shopping for anything they desired. He further claims that BP was working closely with MI6 at the highest levels to help it to win business in the region and influence governments.
He describes a Wild West world in which oil executives with briefcases full of dollars rubbed shoulders with mafia members, prostitutes and fixers and cut their deals in smoke-filled back rooms. Sometimes I would charter an entire Boeing to carry as few as seven or eight staff. Mr Abrahams helped to forge links with the local officials constructing the deals by throwing lavish parties. She would use the intimate opportunity to ask us questions about what we were up to.
Zulfie, who did not want his surname printed, said he helped to sort out visa and Customs problems at the airport, and drove the executives to parties with employees of Azerbaijani oil companies in bars and restaurants. But he claimed that financial sweeteners appeared to be commonplace. Everybody here knows that. The girls were very generously rewarded. He said:. I was responsible for the company car pool and I know how many vans officials ordered for their luggage when they flew back to Britain.
