Now the struggle is being decided: Who is taking greater responsibility?
Now the struggle is being decided: Who is taking greater responsibility?
In a unique action several major shareholders in Lundin Petroleum are demanding an independent enquiry into the company’s operations in southern Sudan.
The company is exhorting them to shut up or sell up.
Who has the most responsible attitude, do you think?
In March Aftonbladet published a number of articles dealing with Lundin’s actions in what was then Sudan, now South Sudan, in connection with the search for oil there between 1997 and 2003.
These articles aroused considerable attention as, once again, evidence appeared that the regime was running errands for Lundin and the other oil companies. People were driven off their land and murdered by the army of the regime or by militias supporting the regime so that the oil companies might be allowed to prospect for oil without any disturbance in the form of people who lived and supported themselves there.
The notion that the profits from the potential oil would stay in the region was something that, for good reasons, no one believed in. The money would find it’s way into the pockets of the ruling elite in the capital.
Those projects in the field of healthcare that Lundin claimed to have engaged in were, according to those people Aftonbladet spoke to on the spot, not something that anyone could remember.
After publication, on March 20 this year, a number of Lundin Petroleum’s major shareholders met at Grand Hotel in Stockholm with the company’s board, including chairman Ian Lundin and CEO Ashley Heppenstall. At that meeting the major shareholders demanded of the company an independent enquiry by Swedish international experts.
One might say, to put it in a nutshell, that the major shareholders had no faith in the management of the company. They no longer had any confidence any longer in the idea that everything had been as pure as the driven snow in Sudan as the management had claimed.
Company management did not understand the subtle criticism, and resisted.
For this reason not much happened until, in an interview last week, Heppenstall said that shareholders who do not trust the management of Lundin Petroleum are welcome to sell their shares in the company.
Suddenly the story caught fire again. Lundin challenged its major shareholders and they did it with a vengeance. Shut up or sell up.
Today the question comes to a head at Lundin Petroleum’s AGM, which also takes place at the Grand Hotel, the Wallenberg family’s own prestigious hotel
Central to the Swedish Companies Act is responsibility for the company. The management runs the company under the supervision of the board. It can be removed by the general meeting, that is by the owners, or not be granted discharge of responsibility.
None of this will happen at today’s meeting. At this meeting the struggle will be about an independent enquiry and who is taking greater responsibility for Lundin Petroleum.
CEO Ashley Heppenstal considers that he is, by opposing an enquiry, encouraging the major shareholders to sell (imagine the chaos there would be if all of them did this at the same time) and instead referring to the preliminary investigation into alleged crimes against international law which public prosecutor Magnus Elving at the international prosecutor’s office has been running since 2010.
Major shareholders such as Folksam, Sjunde AP-fonden and the insurance company AMF naturally consider that they are taking responsibility for Lundin. They want a return on their money in the future too, and they therefore think that Lundin Petroleum should do their dirty washing in public and thoroughly.
This does not necessarily mean that the investigators will find serious proof that Lundin was negligent during its time in the Sudan. But clearly the major shareholders find the recurrent details of murder and the expulsion of the population in the shadow of oil exploration so embarrassing that they wish to know what can be known.
Today the struggle will be decided. Who takes greater responsibility for Lundin Petroleum – the external major shareholders or the management supported by the Lundin family’s investment company Lorita with 24% of the shares? I know what I think.
- Database Search
- Unpaid Debt A comprehensive overview of the role of the Lundin Consortium in the oil war. ECOS calls upon the Swedish, Austrian and Malaysian governments to investigate whether, as a matter of international law, Lundin, OMV and Petronas 'were complicit in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity by others during the period 1997-2003.’ In response, the Swedish Public Prosecutor for International crimes opened a criminal investigation into ‘links between Sweden and the reported crimes’.
- In Depth For more specific information about the Lundin court case please visit the Unpaid Debt dossier.
