BP’s ads point to probe of spill claims process
BP is taking heat for running full-page ads in New York and Washington newspapers on the 12th anniversary of 9/11 touting an investigator’s finding of misconduct by some people involved in processing claims under last year’s multibillion dollar Gulf of Mexico oil spill settlement.
The ads Wednesday in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post asserted fraud has been “confirmed.” The ads described as “shocking” the findings issued last week as part of an independent investigation of the claims process, and stated they “may just be the tip of the iceberg.”
In a blog post Thursday, Joe Rice, one of the plaintiffs lawyers who helped negotiate the spill settlement, called the timing and placement of the British oil company’s ads “disheartening and outright offensive.”
The attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.
“The 9/11 families need our continued support, and BP was unable to put aside their antics for one day out of respect to all of the fallen, the 9/11 survivors and the 9/11 families,” Rice wrote.
BP did not respond to several requests for comment.
Over the last several months, BP has waged an aggressive public relations and legal battle over the way claims administrator Patrick Juneau’s office has been paying claims. A federal appeals court ruling over the method for paying business loss claims is pending.
In his report last week, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who was appointed by a federal judge in New Orleans to investigate the claims process, said he found pervasive conflicts of interest among senior staffers involved in the process. He recommended that the Justice Department consider criminal charges against several of them.
Freeh also said, however, that Juneau has acted ethically and that the payment of claims should continue unabated.
Several lawyers cited in the report plan to challenge the findings.
According to Juneau’s latest accounting, as of Wednesday, $4.67 bil- lion in payouts had been offered on 56,171 claims, a per-claim average of more than $83,000.
Besides the payouts to claimants, BP has been challenging the amount of money Juneau and the vendors he has hired to process claims have been budgeting for their administrative expenses, for which BP also is picking up the tab. BP lost a challenge of the administrator’s third-quarter budget. In court papers this week, it challenged Juneau’s fourth-quarter budget of $111 million. BP, which calls the proposed budget deeply flawed and excessive, wants the amount cut by at least $25.5 million.