Former employee sues SBM Offshore for “ruining his life”
Jonathan Taylor and his family were arrested in Croatia - All rights reserved
The story begins some ten years ago.
In 2013, Jonathan Taylor, a former in-house counsel with the Dutch oil company SBM Offshore, based in Monaco, revealed what La Maison des Lanceurs d’Alerte described as a “massive system of corruption.”
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The former employee allegedly discovered that between 2005 and 2011, according to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, SBM Offshore paid some $275 million (€185 million at the time) in bribes to various countries in order to secure oil contracts.
Following the revelations, the company was ordered to pay over $800 million in fines to the US, the Netherlands and Brazil. The investigations also led to the prosecution of two former CEOs, Didier Keller and Tony Mace, for fraud-related offences. Both were given fines and long, partly suspended, prison sentences,
However, SBM Offshore hit back and alleged the whistleblower had “stolen documents,” as well as attempting extortion, demanding the tidy sum of €3 million in return for his silence.
The accusations were clearly unfounded but, as reported by Danas.hr, they led to Jonathan Taylor being placed on Interpol’s red list and arrested in Croatia in 2018 while he was travelling there with his family. According to Upstream Online, he was placed under house arrest there for 50 weeks. “He was alone, separated from his family and unable to support himself or his family, which had an enormous impact on his mental well-being,” says La Maison des Lanceurs d’Alerte.
An extradition request
Monaco then requested that Jonathan Taylor be extradited in order to question him about the allegations levelled at him by SBM Offshore. However, on 7 July 2021, the Croatian Justice Minister, Ivan Malenica, formally denied the request. The Principality then withdrew the international arrest warrant, two years after it had been issued.
“I am delighted that justice has finally prevailed, and I am grateful to Justice Minister Ivan Malenica for taking into account my lawyers’ legal arguments, which had apparently been overlooked by the courts, in deciding to reject Monaco’s flawed extradition request,” said Jonathan Taylor.
Back up to the present day. The whistleblower is now suing SBM Offshore, and specifically Bruno Chabas and Sietze Hepkema, the company’s CEO and former Chief Governance and Compliance Officer respectively. The case is being brought before the court in Harleem, in the Netherlands. Jonathan Taylor claims the company tried to “ruin his life,” and is seeking “substantial damages.”
Purely legal aspects aside, this case has attracted a great deal of attention from whistleblower protection bodies. In 2022, Sherpa submitted to the French parquet national financier (national financial prosecutor’s office) “a request for an investigation to be launched into the activities of the oil giant SBM Offshore, for corruption, money-laundering and receiving stolen goods, in order to shed light on the involvement of French figures in widespread corruption activities allegedly carried out by the multinational in most of the areas where it was operating.”
“I am in search of justice on a personal level”
Calls for genuine legal and legislative protection for whistleblowers have also been made. Meanwhile, as Upstream Online reported, Jonathan Taylor, who is demanding a public apology from the company, urges whistleblowers to think carefully about the potential consequences of contacting the authorities, and suggests acting anonymously.
“I am in search of justice on a personal level,” he told the online newspaper, “as well as an award of substantial damages and the return of the costs I have incurred. (…) [The company] was wrong to publicly call me a blackmailer — I never was a blackmailer. I am a whistleblower. I should never have suffered in the life-changing ways that I have, for being just that.”
As for SBM Offshore, a spokesperson told Upstream Online that the company “has never recognised itself in the facts and circumstances as presented by Mr Taylor. That is also the case for this recent writ, which we will defend accordingly.”