May 10 2016
BP signed a multimillion-dollar contract for work in Iraq with a firm that had been linked to corruption allegations in the country one year previously, the Panama Papers reveal.
A document included in the leak from the offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca reveals that in 2014 the oil company hired Unaoil to undertake work at the Kirkuk oilfield in northern Iraq.
Unaoil found itself at the centre of an international bribery scandal earlier this year after its own leak of internal emails resulted in raids directed by the Serious Fraud Office.
The Monaco-based company was first named in connection with corruption allegations in an investigation by the Sydney Morning Herald in 2013. The newspaper alleged that Leighton Holdings, an Australian construction firm, had paid “kickbacks” to Unaoil via a vastly inflated $87m (£60m) contract for work in Iraq.
But a few months later BP had signed a $1m contract with Unaoil, the first of two for engineering services related to the Kirkuk oilfield in Iraq. The second contract, signed in August 2014, was valued at $6m.