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| Tengratila Gas Field explosion in June 2005. Courtesy: The Daily Star |
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‘As a result of corruption, private mansions are being built instead of bridges; swimming pools are dug instead of irrigation systems; funds destined to run hospitals and buy medicines find their way into the pockets of corrupt officials; economic growth is held back; and public trust in government is undermined.’ – OECD/ADB ‘Curbing Corruption in Public Procurement in Asia and the Pacific’
Most third world countries have at least one Mr 10% – without the protection of whom deals never get done and files mysteriously refuse to move. But it would have been a blessing if it had been only one Mr 10%. Many developing countries are rather cursed with a gang of them. They hold up a world philosophy: ‘Corruption is there everywhere in the world. Corruption was there, is there, will be there.’ (Niko Resources: Ottawa’s corruption test case, The Globe and Mail, 25 August 2011).
On 24 June 2011, on the sixth anniversary of the second blowout at Tengratila gas field in Bangladesh, Niko Resources Ltd., the Canadian oil and gas company responsible for those blowouts, pleaded guilty of bribing Bangladesh’s state minister for energy, A.K.M. Mosharraf Hossain. An Alberta Court has fined it 9.5 million dollars for the corruption of bribing foreign public officials.
Justice Scott Brooker of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench, described Niko’s conduct as ‘an embarrassment to all Canadians’ and a ‘dark stain on Calgary’s proud reputation as the energy capital of Canada.’ The amount of the bribe and the method the company followed is head-spinning.
The story began in 1997 when Niko waded into the corruption-muddled waters of bureaucracy in Bangladesh. It was being promoted by energy secretary Towfik-e-Elahi during the previous Awami League regime. [The Daily Star, 19 June 2005]. In 1998, Niko’s founder Robert Ohlson admitted to having spent 10,000 dollars regularly during each of his frequent trips to Dhaka. However, the Awami League government disqualified it from bidding on gas projects due to its lack of technical expertise.
‘On June 28, 1998, Niko again submitted a proposal to the Bangladesh government for developing the ‘marginalised’ gas field in Tengratila of Chhatak. The then energy secretary prepared a proposal for the deal, marking the gas fields as ‘marginalised and abandoned’ and saying an agreement might be signed with Niko ….’ [The Daily Star, 10 December 2007]
The election of the BNP in October 2001 offered it a bigger chance. Pushed by Mr Mosharraf, the state petroleum company BAPEX had to enter into a Joint Venture Agreement with Niko in late 2003. Niko grabbed the deal to explore the `marginalised’ and ‘abandoned’ gas fields, whereas Tengratila’s is an unexplored gas field. It even did not need to submit a tender for this.
Niko began its drilling operation at Tengratila on 31 December 2004, and 7 days later there was the fatal blow-out. Six months later, another blowout occurred at the same gas field. The blowouts cost Bangladesh about 1,794 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas worth Tk 13,631 crore. But it earned the energy minister a Toyota Land Cruiser. The picture of that dazzling Tk 1 crore Lexus car was splashed on the front page of The Daily Star on 19 June 2005. BAPEX officials were punished as scapegoats. Niko and all its deshi accomplices went scot-free.
The Niko scam has gone down in the legal history of Canada, according to the report in The Globe And Mail, the Canadian daily. The report has brought out the names of some princes of corruption surrounding the gas exploration in Bangladesh during the previous BNP regime. They are: Tarique Rahman, Giasuddin al Mamun, Dhaka Club’s Selim Bhuiya. Part of the story told by Mr McArthur is, ‘After Niko was handed drilling rights, more than $500,000 (U.S.) appeared in Bhuiyan’s bank account …. From there, Bhuiyan said he dispersed some of the money to the cast of characters surrounding Prime Minister Khaleda Zia—including al Mamun. A portion of the payment, Bhuiyan believed, would go to al Mamun’s friend, the Prime Minister’s son. Hossain, the former minister who would not take “a single pie” from anyone, received a total of $102, 000.’
According to the report, supporters of Canada’s foreign corruption law say that ‘bribery undermines the rule of law, erodes trust and enables political leaders to hoard proceeds that should be spread among the masses—practices that the world’s leading democracies cannot allow their corporations to facilitate.’
Canada’s Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have shown their teeth. Bangladesh’s Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) has started an enquiry about the Niko affairs. It had done this during the reign of the past caretaker government, as well. But can it ever show a tiny bit of its teeth?
[First published in Dhaka Courier on October 7th, 2011]
