SHELL PAYS FOR HER WRONGDOING BUT NOT IN THE PHILIPPINES

Shell Oil Company to Pay $2.2 Million Settlement to Resolve Federal False Claims Case

May 11th, 2011 by John Donovan.

Tuesday, 10 May 2011: Contact: Patrick Etchart, ONRR (303) 231-3162

WASHINGTON–(ENEWSPF)–May 10, 2011. Shell Oil Company, Shell Offshore Inc., Shell Frontier Oil & Gas Inc., and Shell Western Exploration and Production (Shell Defendants) have agreed to pay the United States $2.2 million plus interest to resolve claims that the companies violated the False Claims Act by knowingly underpaying royalties owed on natural gas produced from Federal leases, the Department of the Interior (DOI) and the U.S. Department of Justice announced today.

The agreement was reached among the Shell Defendants, the Department of the Interior through its Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR), and the Department of Justice. The total payment, including interest, is $2,287,145.74.

"We are required to ensure that energy companies accurately report production and pay the required royalties," said Chris Henderson, Acting Assistant Secretary for the DOI's Office of Policy, Management and Budget. "We will continue to pursue any case where companies do not follow the rules."

"Natural gas is a non-renewable resource. When the United States allows companies to remove gas from public lands that belong to all of us, we must require those companies to pay all of the royalties they owe, because those funds support important federal programs from which we all benefit," said Tony West, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. "Through cases like this, we are keeping our commitment to protect public lands and the valuable resources they contain."

The Office of Natural Resources Revenue, part of the DOI's Office of Policy, Management and Budget (PMB), is responsible for collecting and disbursing royalties from energy production that occurs onshore on Federal and American Indian lands, and offshore in the Outer Continental Shelf. Each month, companies are required to report to ONRR the value of the natural gas produced from the Federal leases and to pay a percentage of the reported value as royalties.

The settlement announced today resolves claims that Shell underpaid royalties for natural gas production on Federal leases.

The settlement with Shell arises from a lawsuit filed by Harrold Wright under the Federal False Claims Act. Under the qui tam, or whistleblower, provisions of the Act, private citizens may file actions on behalf of the United States and share in any recovery. Because Mr. Wright is deceased, his heirs will receive $572,000 as part of their share of the $2.2 million settlement.

According to Henderson, the Shell settlement follows several other agreements with other energy companies in recent years that have returned approximately $230 million to the Federal Government.

The investigation and settlement of these matters were jointly handled by the Justice Department's Civil Division and the Department of the Interior's Office of Natural Resources Revenue, with assistance from the Department of the Interior's Office of Inspector General, and Office of the Solicitor.

SOURCE ARTICLE

Posted in: Business Principles, Corporate Governance, Gas, Litigation, Oil, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Shell, Wikipedia.

Tagged: False Claims Act · Litigation · Oil · Royal Dutch Shell Plc

← Shell Oil, affiliates to pay $2.2M to settle allegations they underpaid royalties owed to USShell Oil Companies to Pay $2.2 Million to Resolve Allegations of Royalty Underpayments from Federal Lands

ART. 2232 CIVIL CODE

Iniwanan sa simbahan  IKAW AT ANG BATAS Ni Atty. Jose C. Sison (Pilipino Star Ngayon) Updated April 28, 2011 12:00 AM Comments (4)

ANG kasong ito ay nag-umpisa sa isang pag-iibigan na puno ng pag-asa at pagmamahalan. Sinundan pa ng detalyadong pagpaplano at magarbong preparasyon na humantong lang sa pagkapahiya at kalungkutan.

Ito ang kuwento ng isang dalaga na tawagin nating Cindy. Nagkaroon siya ng nobyo na ang pangalan ay Robert. Nakilala niya ito sa isang kilalang unibersidad kung saan sila parehong nag-aaral. Ang relasyon ng dalawa ay kalat sa buong eskuwelahan dahil na rin sa tamis ng kanilang pagmamahalan. Sa kanilang mga ka-klase, kitang-kita na isang relasyon ito na hahantong sa simbahan at magiging masayang-masaya ang dalawa.

Nagpatuloy ang relasyon nina Cindy at Robert hanggang makagradweyt sa kolehiyo. Natuloy ang engagement at nagplano ng kasal ang dalawa. Ang tradisyonal na pamanhikan ay sinunod. Kumuha ng lisensiya sa kasal. Ang kasal ay tinakda ng Setyembre, isang Sabado sa isang kilalang simbahan. Maganda ang mga imbitasyon na ipinalimbag at ipinadala sa mga kaanak, kakilala at kaibigan ng dalawa. Ang gown ni Cindy, mga damit sa selebrasyon, iba pang damit ng mga abay at flower girl ay binili at inihanda na. Kinontrata na ang isang five-star hotel kung saan gaganapin ang reception ng kasal. Kahit nga ang mismong kama o "matrimonial bed" pati ang lahat ng mga gamit ay binili na. Ngunit, dalawang araw bago ang kasal, nakatanggap ng isang nakababahalang sulat si Cindy mula kay Robert. Sinasabi nito na ipagpaliban muna nila ang kasal dahil sa posibleng pagtutol ng ina ng lalaki. Pero sumunod na araw ay sinabi naman ng lalaki na walang problema at tuloy ang itinakdang kasalan. Sa kasamaang-palad, iyon na ang huling narinig ni Cindy mula kay Robert. Ang pinakaaaba-ngan na kasalan ay nakansela. Sa tindi ng sama ng loob at pagkapahiyang naranasan, kinasuhan ni Cindy at ng kanyang pamilya si Robert para maghabol ng danyos. Makakakuha ba si Cindy ng bayad sa danyos-perwis­yong inabot?

OPO. Ang ordinaryong pangako ng kasal ay hindi naman talaga tatanggapin na kaso sa korte. Walang ma­gagawa kung sakaling hindi ito panindigan. Kaya lang ang ginawa rito sa kasong ito na pormal na pagtatakda ng ka­ sal, magarbong paghahanda at detalyadong preparasyon, pagkatapos ay bigla na lang iiwanan ang kawawang ba­baeng papakasalan sa altar ay ibang usapin na. Kaila-ngang panagutan ni Robert ang lahat ng bayarin at danyos dahil hindi na ito simpleng paglabag sa ating kinamulatang tradisyon. Hindi limi­tado ang sakop ng kayang ikaso sa tao. Ayon sa ating batas (Art. 21 Civil Code), ang kahit sino na kusang loob na gagawa ng isang ba­ gay na makakapanakit sa iba sa paraan na kontra sa moralidad, tradisyon o panuntunan ng publiko ay dapat magbayad ng danyos-perwisyo. Maari pa nga na ang danyos ay magmula sa pagkapahiya (moral) o para hindi na siya tularan ng iba (exemplary damage) (Art. 2219[10] & Art. 2232 Civil Code). Bilang basehan ay puwedeng gamitin ni Cindy ang desisyon sa kasong Wassmer v. Veles 12 SCRA 648.

SO WITH THE CALLUSES ON THE 'EYES OF THE COURT'

President: No more blindfold on 'eyes of bureaucracy'

By Christine O. Avendaño, Leila B. Salaverria
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:28:00 05/11/2011

Filed Under: Government offices & agencies, Accounting and Audits, Graft & Corruption, Civil & Public Services, Housing Mortgage & Loans

MANILA, Philippines—President Benigno Aquino III Tuesday told state auditors—"the eyes of the bureaucracy," in his words—that they could now do their job of safeguarding the public coffers without fear that they would be stopped.

Speaking at the 112th anniversary celebration of the Commission on Audit (COA) at its office in Quezon City, the President urged state auditors to join his administration's fight against corruption, saying that things were now different under his watch.

"If before, auditors were afraid to reveal the anomalies they see in government transactions, now you are given the power to be free, brave and fearless in your duties. If before, unscrupulous officials tend to raid the public coffers, now just hearing the name COA would strike fear in them and they would withdraw," Mr. Aquino said in a speech delivered in Filipino.

"Being the eyes of the bureaucracy, you know that no one is blindfolding you in tracking down anomalies. No one is stopping you to speak up against things that are not right, and no one is tying you so you can fulfill your mandate to be honest and loyal guardians of the people's money," he said.

Top women

Mr. Aquino made special mention of both COA Chair Grace Pulido Tan and Commissioner Heidi Mendoza in his speech.

He said it was important in his crusade against corruption to bring into the commission people who could be trusted and would not consider any government official as a sacred cow. He said this was why he did not hesitate to appoint Tan as its chair.

"And when we met Heidi Mendoza, we also did not pass up the chance to appoint her as commissioner," he said of the woman who blew the whistle on the irregular transactions made by former military comptroller Carlos Garcia.

The President also said those named "Heidi" or its variants were apparently women who were fearless and who would not exchange principles for bribes. He cited the efforts of auditor Haydee Pasuelo from Iloilo City, who was able to stop three agencies from spending P97.8 million and discovered that two government officials had been able to steal more than P1 million.

Pasuelo was named COA's outstanding employee for the year and received an award from the President.

Mr. Aquino also called on state auditors not to accept bribes from agencies whose records they were examining, whether in the form of a house, a car or money.

The right path

"This is true service. This is the right path. This is the realization of our goal for change, and you auditors are in the frontline of this fight," he said.

The President said he expected the new Ombudsman who would replace the resigned Merceditas Gutierrez would be able to work well with the COA.

"If the COA files a case in the Office of the Ombudsman, we are expecting that it will be attended to and studied well, that it will not be just put in a corner, or that it will be resolved with the people ending up losing," he said.

The President is now waiting for the Judicial and Bar Council to submit a short list of nominees for Ombudsman.

Stellar auditors

Gutierrez, who was impeached by the House of Representatives, was to have been tried at the Senate this month. She submitted her resignation to Mr. Aquino last week.

Despite threats to their lives, a group of state auditors have examined the records of numerous transactions and have gone the extra mile to uncover irregularities involving public funds, primarily the scam involving Pag-IBIG housing loans.

On Tuesday, the COA honored them in a ceremony attended by a President for the first time.

Two groups led the awardees—Audit Team 3 from Regional Office VII (Central Visayas) in Tacloban City, and Audit Team 6 from its Regional Office I (Ilocos) in San Fernando—which had uncovered bogus borrowers, ineligible developers and other irregularities involving the Home Development Mutual Fund or Pag-IBIG.

The irregular transactions involved over P500 million in funds. The members of Audit Team 3 are Rodulfo Ariesga, Alicia Malquisto, Imelda Oballo, Elena Merida and Josefina Galos. The members of Audit Team 6 are Sabiniano Cabatuan, Pelilia Veloso, Herminia Laforteza and Nixon Niera.

The Pag-IBIG loan scam had also headlined legislative inquiries.

According to the COA, the auditors of Team 6 did not have an easy time because they received threats to their safety when they were scrutinizing the housing records. The officials they were investigating also delayed the submission of reports and records, and offered self-serving explanations.

Those they had investigated also resorted to misrepresentations to distract the team's attention from the issue.

The COA said the accomplishments of Team 3, which is considered the whistle-blower of the Pag-IBIG loan scam, helped enhance the commission's image and credibility, especially when the team testified at congressional hearings on the bogus housing loan borrowers.

Team 3's technique in uncovering the anomalies will help future investigations because it shared its audit programs that can be implemented nationwide, the COA said.

COA's role in governance

The commission commended Pasuelo for her work disallowing the expenses of three government agencies amounting to P97.84 million, and which have also resulted in the dismissal of two government officers for malversation of public funds amounting to P1.25 million.

The expenses that Pasuelo had disallowed included disbursements for financial assistance to volunteer health workers, procurement of digital sterilizers for a hospital and payment of extra cash gift to employees of the provincial government of Iloilo.

The COA said Pasuelo's accomplishments heightened the people's awareness of the commission's role in good governance and in the fight against graft and corruption.

THE NATIONAL TREASURY IS PEOPLE'S MONEY

Theres The Rub
Missing link
By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:12:00 03/08/2011

Filed Under: Graft & Corruption, Government offices & agencies, Government Contracts, Judiciary (system of justice), Military, State Budget & Taxes

ARE WE making great strides in the fight against corruption?
Yes and no.
The yes is patent. You compare the Senate hearings on the NBN deal with the one we have on the Garcia plea-bargaining case, and you see that the differences are monumental.
In the NBN case, you had a sense of the Senate working under a hostile environment. That environment was a government determined to cover up the perfidy, not least because it involved its highest officials leading up to the First Couple themselves. Though some of the senators performed brilliantly, with no small help from Jun Lozada, unearthing not just an entire conspiracy to defraud the public but an entire culture behind it—"moderate the greed" was one of the mind-boggling concepts it bequeathed to us—you had a feeling it would go the route of the Jose Pidal case, the "Hello, Garci" case, the Mega Pacific case.
Which it did.
In today's investigation of the generals, you have a sense that the Senate can really get to the bottom of things, no small thanks to a government giving it no reason not to. The senators have been spirited in their interpellation, or interrogation. I particularly like the part where Franklin Drilon put Edgardo Yambao in a quandary by asking him if he was waiving his right to deposits totaling P255 million in various banks after he denied owning them. It made him reconsider his position posthaste. Not an easy choice: future loss of freedom for money laundering and/or tax evasion or immediate loss of a fortune for abandoning a claim to it.
You have the sense that this time around, the crooks won't just be found, they will be punished. The newfound zeal has already driven someone to end his life, though that is probably more a testament to his own moral code than to the Senate's heightened acuity. But though Angelo Reyes may be a fluke, his death helps to push back the culture of impunity, which applied not just to murder but to theft. Before this, the corrupt could rob the country blind and expect not be touched—not by the shadow of jail, not by the breath of death. Reyes' death showed they can. Where their own hand fails, justice can always lend a hand.
Along with Merceditas Gutierrez's impending impeachment, President Aquino's "Pag walang corrupt, walang mahirap" seems to be getting a lot of traction. Those two things, the Senate hearing on Garcia and Gutierrez's impeachment, are bound to impact on each other and reinforce each other, making them more than the sum of their parts. The signs are hopeful in that respect.
So, yes, we are making inroads in the fight against corruption.
The no is a lot less patent but no less real. You can see that too in one vital similarity between the NBN hearing and the Garcia one. That is the lack of public outrage surrounding it.
There is public interest surrounding it, but not widespread outrage, not deep-seated opprobrium, not complete and utter reprehension. There were pockets of it during the NBN hearing, particularly after Lozada narrated his abduction, and there are pockets of it now, particularly after Reyes took his own life. But it does not seep downward.
That's the missing link in our investigations of corruption, in our hearings about pillage. In other countries, public opinion is very much a part of those investigations and hearings, public revulsion at the crooks, civil or military, is very much an element guaranteeing that they will be found out and punished. Not so here.
One is tempted to say that the solution is to exhort the public to be more vigilant of their rights, to be more watchful about their liberties, to be more jealous about their property. In part that is true: A great deal of indifference and cynicism has seeped into the culture, no small thanks to the last nine years, which needs pushing back. But it's really more than that. Because the problem really is not that we are tolerant of the robbery that is taking place before our eyes, it is that we cannot see the robbery that is taking place before our eyes.
The common reaction from the man in the street, "Sila sila lang naman 'yan," suggests the depth of the problem: It's just a division of spoils. If corruption is robbery at all, it is robbery between public officials. They are robbing each other, they are screwing each other. They are not robbing us, they are not screwing us.
To be jealous of your property, you must know that it is your property. That's the crux of the problem. Elsewhere in the world, that is very clear. Taxes are the people's money, the national treasury is the people's money, the money that public officials use is the people's money. That is not at all clear here. We do not really see taxes as our money. We—the poor especially who imagine they do not pay taxes anyway when in fact they do courtesy of VAT—do not see taxes as something we entrust to government to give back to us in the form of roads and bridges and schoolhouses. We see taxes as gratuity, or tong, we are required to give our officials in the same way that serfs give up part of their harvest to their lords, in the same way that vassals give tribute to their masters. Once we give it to them, it is no longer our property, it is theirs.
We do make paeans to taxpayers' money as being the people's money, but that hasn't seeped into the culture, that hasn't seeped into the national consciousness. That is what needs to be done. The fight against corruption cannot be waged solely by government. That is impossible; all that it will lead to is a reasonably honest government succeeding in moderating the greed. So long as the people themselves are not incensed by corruption because they do not see it as stealing from them, so long will it thrive, moderated or not.
We've still a long way to go.

DISCIPLINING JUDGES SHOULD BE TRANSACTED IN PUBLIC

How Judges Hide From Justice

By ROBERT H. TEMBECKJIAN

Published: May 22, 2005

IN the last three months, the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct has publicly disciplined four metropolitan-area judges: two from Brooklyn, one from Manhattan and one from Westchester. Apart from some intense public commentary over the merits of these decisions - three public censures and one removal from office - these cases had at least one thing in common. They were all conducted in secret. That should be changed.

Judges are among the most powerful of public servants. They decide who goes to jail, who wins or loses millions of dollars and who gets custody of children. Public confidence in their integrity and impartiality is essential to the rule of law. While a vast majority of judges are honorable, there will always be some who engage in unethical behavior. Disciplining such judges is important business that should be transacted in public, just as any civil or criminal trial would be.

In 38 states, judicial misconduct hearings are indeed open to the public. Not so in New York, where proceedings that stretch over months are held behind closed doors. Only when the results are announced does the public even learn such cases existed. By then, it is usually too late to convey in a meaningful way the strength of the case, the credibility of the witnesses and the merits of the defense. The four recent decisions in New York offer cases in point.
The commission voted to remove a Surrogate's Court judge in Brooklyn for awarding a long-time friend millions of dollars in fees from estates where there was no executor, without confirming that he had done enough work to earn such fees. The judge is appealing the decision.
The commission censured a Westchester Family Court judge who attempted to influence other judges and court workers on behalf of friends in two divorce and custody cases, and who testified in a manner she conceded was inaccurate. It also censured a Brooklyn Criminal Court judge for coming off the bench in unprovoked anger and grabbing and screaming at a defense lawyer. Finally, it censured a Manhattan Civil Court judge for presiding over a personal injury case involving a litigant who was also a lawyer with whom she continued to socialize, and to whom she awarded a fiduciary appointment worth about $80,000 in fees, while the case was pending.
Reasonable people may differ with these decisions. As the prosecutor of judicial misconduct cases in New York, I myself am sometimes at odds with the commission. Yet while some criticized the removal as severe, and others derided the censures as lenient, most tended to miss the context and nuance of the deliberations. The subtleties of an individual disciplinary decision tend to get short shrift in the news. Were the press and public able to follow along as these cases unfolded, the disciplinary process would not seem so sudden and mysterious, and citizens would be better informed along the way. For example, the case against the Brooklyn Surrogate's Court judge lasted 22 months, and the record was over 13,000 pages long. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to capture the complexities of such a proceeding in a single article that reported the final result.
New York's chief judge, Judith Kaye, proposed legislation in 2003, which the commission endorsed, to open up the disciplinary process at the point when a judge is formally charged with misconduct. Unfortunately, the Legislature did not act. Perhaps the commission's recent decisions might spur the Senate and Assembly to revisit the issue. The more citizens know about what goes on at the commission, the more likely they will appreciate that no case is as cut and dried as a critic may suggest. The press and public could follow the arguments as they develop, rather than try to digest them all at once when the decisions are rendered.
Moreover, an open proceeding would shed important light on the rare instance in which a formal charge against a judge is dismissed without any disciplinary action. It would provide the public with the means to assess that a dismissal was deserved and the system was honest.
In short, a public process would transform judicial discipline from a secretive game to one in which the commission's judgments were open to scrutiny and improvement as we went along, while there was time enough to make a difference. Public confidence in the judiciary, and in the disciplinary system that holds them accountable, requires nothing less.
Robert H. Tembeckjian is administrator of and counsel to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct.