BP Amoco has said it will push Angola to clarify how that country’s government spends money raised from oil companies operating within its borders.
Peter Sutherland, chairman of the oil giant, has told the human rights campaigner Lord Avebury that BP Amoco will ‘insist, so far as we can, that such payments are transparent’ so that Angolan voters can see if the money has been spent on arms.
Lord Avebury and the pressure group Human Rights Watch have criticised BP Amoco and other oil companies for paying ‘signature bonuses’ to the Angolan government for the right to carry out oil exploration. They claim that during 1999 the state used around $870 million of bonuses, mainly paid by BP Amoco, Exxon and Elf Aquitane, to buy weapons covertly ‘to ratchet up the civil war’ in the country – despite a United Nations arms embargo which has been in place since 1993.
In a letter to Lord Avebury, Sutherland has claimed signature bonuses are ‘standard practice’ throughout the world, and that ‘not everyone would agree that global companies should have the right or the legitimacy to tell lawful governments what they should or should not spend their money on’.
But he said he would urge the government in Angola to publish a regular audit showing exactly how the oil revenues had been spent, which is what Human Rights Watch is calling for.
Diamond companies have also been criticised for allegedly not doing enough to encourage government transparency in Angola. De Beers stopped buying diamonds in Angola last year due to concerns ‘about people identifying diamonds with conflict’.