**11. Corruption IN the oil and gas industry**

There are numerous cases of corruption in this sector. I will use just the Panalpina case for brevity. It is interesting that this case absorbs all of the things that have been discussed above. Again, it shows that the core of corruption may remain and that any new changes may simply be to dodge legislations, maximise the ill-benefits, or set pace ahead of policing and investigation.

The Panalpina Bribery Scandal exemplifies the rampant corruption in the minerals sector of commerce and industry. The Panalpina investigations unearthed a broad scheme of widespread corruption in the oil and gas industry. Six oil and gas companies were using a third party to pay and conceal bribes to foreign officials. The aim of the bribe payments was to obtain or retain business. Between 2002 and 2007 Panalpina World Transport subsidiary, Panalpina Inc. played the role of intermediary and paid Noble Corporation, Transocean Inc., Pride International Inc., Royal Dutch Shell Private Limited Corporation, Tidewater Inc., GlobalSantaFe Corporation millions of bribe money. Corruptees in these cases included Angola, Brazil, India, Mexico and Nigeria and other countries. The corrupt deals included bypassing national rules, obtaining lower tax system estimates, gaining preferential treatment in expediting importation of goods and equipment, circumventing national importing regulations, extending drilling contracts, helping their companies to hide the payments, and obtaining false paperwork related to offshore drilling rigs, helping legitimise illegitimate payments made alongside legitimate payments. After the investigations, Panalpina Inc. was fined USD\$472 million. Panalpina Inc. was also using other corrupt means of getting payments from within the subsidiaries. Claims would be headed 'special handling' or 'local processing' and many other terminologies.

Violation Tracker has a record relating to Foreign Corrupt Practices Act showing that in 268 cases of corruption and USD\$14 billion has been collected in fines. In the USA alone, the FCPA revealed that intermediaries were involved in over 90% of cases of corruption unearthed. In 2016, the Fairfax Australian media and the Huffington Post outlets revealed that Unaoil had over a decade been paying bribes on behalf of energy companies in at least nine countries. In 2019, three of Unaoil top executives confessed that they had been facilitating bribe payments.
