EMAIL TO:
James Ross, Senior Legal Adviser
Human Rights Watch HQ
350 Fifth Avenue, 34th floor
New York, NY 10118-3299 USA
Tel: 1-(212) 290-4700, Fax: 1-(212) 736-1300
Dear Mr Ross
THE PERSECUTION OF DR JOHN
HUONG BY A MULTINATIONAL GIANT
I note that your organizations focus is
understandably directed mainly towards evil regimes
that resort to repression and torture.
It is a fact of life in the 21st century that some
multinational companies are as wealthy, powerful and
influential as many Countries. Although I know of
none that resort to physical torture, I
would like to draw your attention to a multinational
which is using tactics against a former employee, Dr
John Huong, which are so reprehensible that in my
humble opinion, they amount to psychological
torture.
Dr Huong, a Malaysian national, was an employee of
Royal Dutch Shell for 29 years. He is a deeply
religious man of the very highest integrity. He is
also a humanitarian. For example, in 2003 Dr Huong
offered his professional services as a geologist
free of payment or compensation, to help in an Iraqi
water irrigation project. I have evidence of the
relevant email correspondence.
Strangely, his moral convictions actually
brought about his downfall at Shell.
Shell supposedly operates within the ethical
framework of a STATEMENT OF GENERAL BUSINESS
PRINCIPLES (SGBP) pledging honesty, integrity,
openness, fairness and respect for people, including
its employees, in all of its dealings. These are the
standards, values and principles by which Shell has
stated that it should be judged.
Dr Huong was proud to work for a multinational which
boasted such noble ideals. He believed the stirring
rhetoric used by Shell senior management in speeches
in which they solemnly promised to uphold the Groups
ethical code. He was also impressed by the related
fine words and pledges in printed materials
circulated to Shell stakeholders.
Reference to the SGBP was even included by Shell in
Form 20F Declarations (signed by senior Shell
executives) which were submitted to the US
Securities & Exchange Commission in respect of
Shell’s hydrocarbon reserves position. Shell
emphasised to the SEC the reliance that could be
placed on the SGBP for “internal controls” and “risk
management”.
The purpose of the SGBP was to impress and inspire
confidence in the ethical and moral fibre of Shell
management.
However, Dr Huong discovered in 1997 and the
immediately following years that the SGBP are in
fact empty promises – propaganda for use in the
circumstances described above and in global
advertising campaigns such as “Profits and
Principles” or “the triple bottom-line”. The SGBP
amounted to nothing more than a confidence trick to
encourage the public and financial institutions into
investing in Shell.
The years in which Sir Mark Moody-Stuart was Group
Chairman of the Royal Dutch Shell Group was a
traumatic period for Shell. The Group had hoped to
emulate Enron’s success at that time. Mr Paddy
Briggs, a Shell veteran of 37 years standing in
Shell Marketing and Corporate Communications, has
said that Shell adopted “Quasi-ideological values”
in response to the then monumental challenges as
reflected in the financial performance of Shell.
The Shareholder’s return was so poor that Sir Mark
Moody Stuart was reported in the Electronic
Telegraph in the following terms: “I'll quit if
Shell revamp fails, says chairman after $4bn hit” on
Friday, 12th February 1999”. The admission that he
had put his job on the line came after massive
fourth-quarter post-tax provisions of almost $4.4
billion (£2.7 billion) to cover huge write-offs
which had almost wiped out the previous year's
profits. Full-year net profits ended at just $350m
compared with $7.7 billion following a
fourth-quarter loss of $3.7 billion against net
income of $1.6 billion in the corresponding period
in 1997.” In other words Shell was making huge
losses rather than the recent record breaking
profits.
That set the scene for what has been
described as the biggest investor fraud in history.
Under the management of Sir Mark, Shell appointed
“value creation teams” who lived up to their
description by conjuring up hydrocarbon reserve
volumes which did not exist.
In January 2004 news broke of what was initially
described as a scandal and then, as more facts
emerged, a full blown fraud. Basically the most
senior directors of the Royal Dutch Shell Group
engaged in a massive fraud to deceive the public and
investors about the volume of Shell’s reserves.
Emails proved that the seeds were sown in 1997.
Internal emails exposed the lies, dishonesty and
cover-up mentality at the highest levels of Shell
management.
In other words, while Shell’s most senior
“fat cat” directors were proclaiming their total
commitment to high ethical standards, they were
simultaneously cooking the books “to fool the
market” by use of outright deception.
(Money Telegraph 7th April 2003: “Shell strikes back
at 'fat cat' criticism”)
Shell has already paid hundreds of millions of
dollars in fines to regulatory bodies such as the US
Securities and Exchange Commission and settlements
of related class action lawsuits. Other lawsuits are
still in progress, as is an investigation by the US
Justice Department against individual current and
former Shell directors.
Dr Huong was, as far as I am aware, the
first Shell employee to blow the whistle internally
at Shell (in 1997) about the deliberate fabrication
of hydrocarbon reserves. This was at a time
when he was Shell’s production geologist for the
Kinabalu oil field. I have copies of Shell internal
documents which prove that Dr Huong put on record
his conscience driven concern that Shell
shareholders were deliberately being misled by
fabricated figures. He also recorded for posterity
in other Shell internal documents, serious breaches
of health and safety issues which put employee lives
at risk.
His objections to bending his principles by turning
a blind eye to wrongdoing proved to be the turning
point in Dr Huong’s previously highly successful
career with Shell. He was humiliated,
victimised, put under intolerable pressure which
made him ill and was ultimately sacked, thereby
further aggravating stress brought about by Shells
actions against him. Prior to the wrongful
dismissal, the domestic inquiry heard that his
medical record in the care of the company doctor
could not even be found. The records had
mysteriously disappeared, just like Shell
hydrocarbon reserves.
In June 2004 Shell obtained a High Court Injunction
and a Restraining Order against Dr Huong in respect
of articles posted by me under his name on my
website (then known as shell2004.com).
Shell lawyers knew that the website was owned by me
but pretended in the court documents that the
postings were made by Dr Huong on a website known as
“Shell Whistleblower No2”. In fact no such site has
ever existed. It was a physical impossibility for Dr
Huong to post anything directly on my original
shell2004.com site which is not a blog site and
therefore has no such facility. Furthermore, Shell
has been aware for the past 18 months that I jointly
co-authored the articles. I amended, edited and
added to the content. My son John assisted me in
this task.
So there were in fact three people involved. Dr
Huong supplied rough drafts in correspondence and my
son and I then developed commentaries to include the
drafts provided by Dr Huong into news worthy
articles and physically posted/published them on my
site, which is hosted in North America and
registered in New York. Shell has been aware of the
true facts since July 2004 but has chosen to vent
its fury solely on Dr Huong.
By way of background information concerning our role
in these matters, my son and I have been involved in
disputes with Shell since 1994. We have successfully
sued them in the High Court several times for breach
of confidence and breach of contract and twice for
libel. We have never lost a case against Shell,
despite its admitted use of undercover agents which
Shell lawyers used to try to intimidate us. Shell’s
actions, including the undercover activity, did
however completely undermine the last High Court
action. We accepted under duress a compromise
settlement in which Shell paid my sons legal costs.
He also received a secret payment, completely at
variance with the “stalemate” scenario announced in
a so called “joint press release”, actually released
solely by Shell. It was not the proper settlement to
which he was entitled.
In May 2005 Shell issued proceedings against me via
The World Intellectual Property Organisation in
respect of Shell related domain names including the
dotcom name for their $223 billion dollar unified
company: ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC. Shell management
made a monumental blunder (one of many) in
neglecting to register the domain name. I won the
case with a unanimous verdict in my favour.
With regards to the subject of libel, Shell issued a
press release a decade ago accusing my son and I of
trying to goad them into issuing libel proceedings
against us. As Shell is aware, we have a volume of
documents in our possession which provide
irrefutable evidence of Shell management misdeeds,
including its deeply ingrained culture of cover-up
and deceit. This is perhaps the explanation for
Shell’s reticence to launch libel proceedings
directly against us.
Shell management evidently views Dr Huong as a soft
target and took draconian action against him rather
than face us once more in the libel courts. The
litigation involving Dr Huong has dragged on since
June 2004 because Shell has insisted in pursuing its
case against him in the High Court of Malaya in
Kuala Lumpur which is located some 1300 kilometres
from where Dr Huong lives, in Miri, near the High
Court of Borneo and the Shell offices where he
worked for so many years. That also seems to be an
attempt to deny him a level playing field.
Dr Huong has been unemployed throughout this period
and has no realistic prospects whatsoever of finding
a position as a geologist while the litigation cloud
hangs over his head. Hence he is short of funds (to
put it mildly) and it is outrageous that a
multinational which has in the last few days
reported profits of $23 BILLION USD is using its
massive financial advantage to further tilt the
scales of justice against him.
Given his financial circumstances there is no way
that Dr Huong can afford to travel and stay in Kuala
Lumpur. Shell is aware of this but is cold-bloodedly
using its massive financial muscle against a
financially weaker opponent.
Naturally Dr Huong is depressed and
distressed at the ruthless way he is being treated
after being a hardworking employee for almost three
decades. Unlike the directors currently still at the
helm of Shell, he is not implicated or tainted by
the reserves fraud. Indeed, if he had been listened
to, the fraud would probably not have happened.
I enclose some information relevant to this
extraordinary matter and hope that Human Rights
Watch will be prepared to consider his case.
In this connection I would be grateful if you would
use the links below to read up to date information
about these matters.
FIRST LINK: An email sent by Dr Huong to the
Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer of Shell on 2nd
February 2006
http://shell2004.com/ShellNewsnet Original news
stories/royal_dutch_shell_group-shell-news-net-email-to-jyoti-munsiff-2-february-2006.htm
SECOND LINK: A draft Affidavit
which my son and I helped Dr Huong to prepare for
possible use in his defence at some point. Neither
he nor his lawyers have approved the draft but it
does accurately set out the background facts,
certainly in relation to the matters in which we
have been personally involved. I appreciate that you
must be busy man but I would be grateful if you
would glance through the draft. I promise you that
it reveals a truly extraordinary situation. If and
when his lawyers review the draft I am sure that it
will be shortened considerably. I believe the full
version has merit in terms of revealing the overall
background situation.
http://shell2004.com/ShellNewsnet Original news
stories/royal-dutch-shell-group-draft-affidavit-of-dr-john-huong-7-febuary-2006.htm
You will see from the draft Affidavit that Dr Huong
is not the only Malaysian former employee of Shell
who is being treated with utter contempt by Shell.
They are other cases against Shell. A Judge has
already decided a case brought by a group of 399
former Shell employees known as “Team A”. He ruled
that Shell made unlawful deductions in breach of the
Employees Provident Fund Act 1951 and 1991. The case
has dragged on for years and Shell is currently
appealing the decision. In the meantime, members of
the group are elderly, sick, and dying.
THIRD LINK: Information about the Team A
claim.
http://shell2004.com/sarawak/exemployees_vs-deduction-of-retirement-fund.htm
FOURTH LINK: ROYAL DUTCH SHELL SUPPORT FOR
HUMAN RIGHTS & FREEDOM OF SPEECH: PR HYPE & SPIN VS.
REALITY…http://www.tellshell.net/blog/_archives/2006/2/5/1746492.html
Viewed against the backdrop of the profits reported
last week, Shell’s conduct against its Malaysian
employees is obscene. It is also completely at odds
with its decidedly more favourable treatment of its
employees in Europe and the USA.
Shell management is famed for its arrogance.
It seems to think that the Shell Group is so
powerful that deceit, intimidation and huge cash
flows will allow it to get away with tyrannical
behaviour against ordinary individuals, be it Dr
Huong, or the “Rossport Five” – the Irishman
recently imprisoned for three months at Shell’s
behest for campaigning against Shell’s plans to
force a local population in County Mayo, Ireland, to
accept the laying of an unsafe pipeline across their
lands.
Apparently Shell is also completely unconcerned at
the unseemly spectacle of a group of EIGHT giant
companies collectively suing one unemployed
Malaysian for telling the truth. Their lawyers have
even threatened Dr Huong with imprisonment.
I hope that your organisation will be able to
persuade Shell that such conduct is unbecoming and
unacceptable.
Finally, I want to make it clear for the record that
I have written to you without the authority of Dr
Huong. I have also simultaneously published his
draft Affidavit so as to put the entire content into
the public domain. I have not obtained permission
from Dr Huong in either instance. Dr Huong would
naturally have to give a negative response out of
fear of reprisals by Shell against himself or his
family. However, if you are able to take up the
case, I will happily put you into direct contact
with him.
Yours sincerely,
Alfred Donovan
Alfred Donovan
Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com
847a Second Avenue, New York City
New York 10017
USA
Email: Alfred@ShellNews.net
Telephone: 1 (646) 502-8756
Fax: 1 (646) 349-2605