Английский язык для экономистов - Малюга Е.Н.
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6) to allege; 0 calculation;
7) indictment g) to state or declare without proof or before finding proof;
8) to bolster; h) a person on one side or the other in a noncriminal case
being decided by a law court;
9) litigant; i) large amount of money;
10) to grouse. J) to stop or delay the advance or development of a person
or activity. 92
Английский ЯЗЫК ДЛЯ экономистов
G.4. Read the article and do the exercises.
Big OiTs Dirty Secrets
"The Economist"
EVEN as it celebrates soaring profits — thanks to higher prices during the war and soaring share prices, now war is over, the oil industry faces a new danger largely of its own creation. It will surprise nobody to learn that oil and ethics mix about as well as oil and water. But, just as the tobacco industry and Wall Street gained a false sense of security because for years they got away with well-known practices of an ethically shady nature, only to pay a hefty price later, so too oil's hour of reckoning may be approaching. There are several reasons, including a high-profile bribery scandal; the growing political sensitivity of the oil industry; changing attitudes to corporate governance; and some potentially explosive lawsuits.
The bribery scandal, which seems certain to grow larger as more details emerge, concerns the battle to win oil contracts in Kazakhstan. During the 1995, several big oil firms fought for the right to exploit the oil riches of the region, including Chevron Texaco, on whose board Condoleezza Rice served prior to joining the Bush administration. And, if prosecutors are to be believed, executives at some firms behaved over-zealously as this battle raged.
This week, Swiss investigators were reported to have added a bribery and monev-laundering probe involving, among others, Credit Agricole, a French bank, to continuing American investigations into alleged Caspian corruption. Last month, a grand jury in New York issued indictments against two Americans - James Giffent an independent banker with close ties to the Kazakh president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and Brvan Williams, a former executive of Mobil. Both deny wrongdoing. America's Justice Department is also looking into whether Mobil, now merged with Exxon, took part in a plan to pay $ 78 m from American and European oil firms into Swiss bank accounts belonging to Mr. Nazarbayev, among others. Exxon Mobil, the world's biggest oil firm, says it knows of no wrongdoing.
Oiling the Wheels
This is already the largest investigation by American authorities into alleged bribery abroad. As it unfolds, it seems certain to provide plenty of colorful stories that will keep it in the spotlight. It involves well-known Russian businessmen and politicians, payments for speedboats and fur coats, and — if only because they too were involved in bidding for Kazakh contracts — other big oil firms besides Mobil, including firms with connections to senior Bush administration officials other than Miss Rice. Unit 5. Business Ethics
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It may also provide the sternest test yet of America's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which outlaws bribery. When the act was introduced in 1977, many American oil firms groused that the law handicapped them against foreign competitors when dealing in the undemocratic and unscrupulous parts of the world where oil is often found. That fear was not entirely groundless, as is clear from the current trial of former officials of France's Elf Aquitaine (now part of Total), where bribery seems to have been a core competency.
Some American oil-industry executives privately grouse that, if anybody is found guilty, it will be due to carelessness.
The FCPA, they admit, can be skirted by careful use of "signature bonus" payments to middlemen brokering contracts and via "arm's-length" transactions involving law firms based, more often than not, in London. On the other hand, argues Scott Horton of Patterson Belknap, a New York law firm, the FCPA has prompted American oil firms, though generally opposed to transnational laws on corporate behaviour, to support efforts led by the OECD to impose an international ban on bribery.
The current scandal in the Caspian can only bolster such efforts to bring some transparency to this mucky business. But will it also lead to a greater questioning of some of the techniques used to get around the FCPA? Amy Jaffe, of Texas's Rice University, insists that the current investigation "is going to force every legal department at every major oil firm to ensure they have a clear picture of what their agents, advisers and everyone else in foreign countries are doing. The Giffen case will define what you can and can't do."
Big oil is also facing legal troubles over its famed love of nature. This week, lawyers for aggrieved indigenous folk filed suit against Chevron Texaco in Ecuador. For a decade, legal activists have been trying to sue Texaco for dumping contaminated water in open ponds in that country's rain forest that, they claim, harmed both health and the environment. The firm denies wrongdoing, noting that there were no specific laws in Ecuador when it operated there that forbade its practices.
