HOW JONATHAN DAVID SLEW THE CORPORATE GOLIATH
WORLD'S BIGGEST CORPORATE WHISTLEBLOWING STORY
HOW JONATHAN DAVID SLEW THE CORPORATE GOLIATH
WORLD'S BIGGEST CORPORATE WHISTLEBLOWING STORY
About Jonathan Taylor
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Who is Jonathan Taylor?
Who is Jonathan Taylor?
Who is Jonathan Taylor?
Jonathan Taylor, lawyer, whistleblower, and INTERPOL Red Notice survivor
Former corporate and in-house lawyer, FBI informant, key witness in Brazil’s notorious Carwash corruption mega-scandal, victim of a spurious Interpol Red Notice, and recipient of the 2021 Blueprint Prize for Whistleblowing: Jonathan has had an eventful decade since he
Jonathan Taylor, lawyer, whistleblower, and INTERPOL Red Notice survivor
Former corporate and in-house lawyer, FBI informant, key witness in Brazil’s notorious Carwash corruption mega-scandal, victim of a spurious Interpol Red Notice, and recipient of the 2021 Blueprint Prize for Whistleblowing: Jonathan has had an eventful decade since he first helped
unearth evidence of multi-million-dollar corruption at his former employer, Dutch listed
multinational SBM Offshore, in 2012.
Jonathan offers a unique insight into corporate fraud, how not to manage a crisis, cross-border investigations, and the life changing risks that whistleblowers face when they dare expose the wrong-doing of the corporate and political elite. With a degree in law and his professional qualifications obtained, Jonathan embarked on a career with a top UK law firm with stints in Cairo, London, including a secondment to Shell, and Muscat. In 2003, he joined the oil services company SBM at their head office in Monaco and rose to be the company’s number two in-house lawyer.
In 2012, he was a senior member of the investigation team that discovered concrete evidence of massive top-down corruption at his then employer. Within months he had resigned, appalled by what he saw as the start of full-scale cover-up. When his fears where confirmed, he formally went public in January 2015 in Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland. In May that year, following headline stories in the Brazilian media, a delegation of Brazilian MPs flew to the UK to hear Jonathan give a five-hour presentation on illicit payments from SBM relating to the national oil and gas company, Petrobras.
By February 2015, the entire board of Petrobras, once the biggest company in the southern
hemisphere by market capitalisation, resigned on the back of Jonathan’s revelations and within a
year, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff had been impeached, found guilty of crimes, and expelled
from office. One month after the Brazilian visit, SBM sued Jonathan for defamation in the Dutch courts, in a classic example of a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation). SBM later dropped the case after a comprehensive defence was filed. In the summer of 2020, he was arrested as he and wife and three children arrived in Dubrovnik, Croatia for a family holiday.
The Interpol Red Notice had been issued by Monaco after a formal complaint of “attempted extortion” from his former employer SBM was made in 2014. He spent a year in detention, first in prison and then under house arrest, awaiting the outcome of the extradition proceedings that ensued. Two dozen British MPs of all parties openly supported his case in response to an urgent question was asked of the FCDO by his MP in the House of Commons.
He has been the subject of sustained and substantial international media interest including in the UK where the BBC, The Times, The Telegraph and The Guardian all followed his plight. He has received the unstinting support of scores of civil society organizations, NGOs, pressure groups and charities
across the globe. He was finally released and allowed to return to the UK in July 2021 after the
intervention of Croatia’s Minister of Justice.
Jonathan has assisted the authorities in the UK, the Netherlands, France, Brazil, Switzerland, and the US, including the FBI who flew him to Washington DC following the publication of the Dutch article in which he went public.
To date, SBM has paid more than US$840 million in penalties to various government agencies. Two of its former CEOs have been convicted for crimes of corruption, one of whom served time in a US jail. Investigations continue into current and former managers. Whilst stuck in Croatia, Jonathan was offered neither help or protection from any of the authorities he assisted including the UK Government. In October 2022, the Appeal Court in Monaco upheld the first
instance decision that Jonathan had no case to answer.
With his life now unrecognisable after his
detainment in Croatia, this was too little too late.
A leading whistleblower of the twenty-first century, Jonathan is a confident and engaging speaker who has a compelling, truth is stranger than fiction, story to tale. He is happy to talk about his first hand experiences and but also offer a thorough understanding of corruption at the highest levels of international society and how the world is ill equipped for whistleblowers.
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His experience
Who is Jonathan Taylor?
Who is Jonathan Taylor?
Jonathan Taylor, a lawyer from Southampton, gained prominence as an oil industry whistleblower. His courageous actions exposed bribery and corruption within his former employer, Dutch oil firm SBM Offshore. Here's the timeline of his story:
1. Jonathan’s exposure of one of the centurys biggest cases of prosecuted corporate fraud
emanati
Jonathan Taylor, a lawyer from Southampton, gained prominence as an oil industry whistleblower. His courageous actions exposed bribery and corruption within his former employer, Dutch oil firm SBM Offshore. Here's the timeline of his story:
1. Jonathan’s exposure of one of the centurys biggest cases of prosecuted corporate fraud
emanating from the top level of management of the company arising from his whistleblowing on the Dutch listed oil and gas industry contractor SBM Offshore N.V. (“SBM”)
2. (February 2012) Notifying the US Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) of senior
officers in the NYSE listed Petroleo Brasileiro (“Petrobras”) receiving hundreds of millions of
dollars in bribes only for it to not take action to protect shareholders (see 16(b) below),
arguably a bigger oversight than the Madoff affair
3. (February 2012) Witnessing an SBM Board member, Jean-Philippe Laures, shredding vital
evidence of bribery and filling approximately ten bin bags therewith, shortly after the scandal came to light
4. (April 2012) An unexplained albeit terrifying car chase on Jonathan’s way home from work
one evening on the very mountain that Princess Grace (Kelly) fell that joins Monaco and La Turbie
5. (February to May 2012) The recording of key meetings involving members of both SBM's
Supervisory and Management Board, including breath-taking admissions and dramatic
discussions around the criminality of the company and attempts at cover-up typified by
SBMs then Chief Corporate and Compliance Office, Sietze Hepkema stating "I am not here
to crucify people.....we are not here to make judgements on what is morally right or morally
wrong. We have a company to run!"
6. How in October 2013 Jonathan originally told the story of SBMs massive bribery scandal
on Wikipedia, thinking his entry had been wiped only for the Wikipedia 'police' to reinstate
the story four months later, without Jonathan’s’ knowledge before the story was found by
the Dutch press giving rise to a memorable lunch with his wife in Romsey, Hampshire staring
at SBMs share price haemorrhaging by 15% +. If the meal wasn’t surreal enough, it occurred
in the presence of Jim Davidson who was out with chumps celebrating his just winning of
celebrity Big Brother 2013. The entry demonstrated how over US$ 250 Million was paid by SBM in bribes over a five-year period alone, often using former SBM directors or heads of
sales and marketing who would resign from SBM and take on an independent 'agency' role;
and telling the world using Wikipedia: essential reading, scroll down entry starts at
“background” to end of point 23 -
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=SBM_Offshore&oldid=577742341
7. (October 2013) Exposing the second son of the kleptocrat President of Equatorial Guinea
(Gabriel Mbega Obiang) as a recipient of US$ 7 Million in SBM bribes;
8. (October 2013) Exposing Monaco based Unaoil as a bribe paying entity (used by SBM for
bribes in Iraq, Italy and Kazakhstan) over two years ahead of Fairfax Media (Australia)
claiming to exclusively reveal it as their story. Former officers of Unaoil and SBM were
prosecuted by the Serious Fraud Office at Southwark Crown Court in 2020, receiving prison
sentences for their part in the Iraq bribes
9. (Starting March 2015) Jonathan made regular visits to the British Serious Fraud Office in
London to advise of SBM’s Brazilian agent Julio Faerman’s involvement in Rolls-Royce
Brazilian bribes too, and at the same meeting, providing the FBI (also present at original
meeting) evidence of the US links to SBM’s fraud thereby causing it to reopen its
investigation into SBM, after it had been closed in November 2014. Jonathan also attended
the SFO’s offices to meet with the Brazilian Public Prosecutor after the then Home
Secretary, The Right Honourable Theresa May MP, permitted the Brazilians to conduct an
"extra-territorial" investigation by seeing him in the UK. Multiple meetings occurred over the next 18 months with the SFO in London and Farnborough, the FBI in Washington and
Farnborough, and the Dutch and Swiss Public Prosecutors in Amsterdam and Lausanne
respectively
10. (June 2015 to November 2016) Jonathan successfully defended a defamation case
brought by SBM against him in Rotterdam, in a jurisdiction where the losing party does not
pay the winning party's costs - a classic case of bottomless pockets Goliath against a whistle-
blower with limited resources, David. SBM were seeking damages from Jonathan for making
of statements in connection with the magnitude of SBM’s fraud, its attempt to cover it up
and how SBM mislead the market. All the statements have subsequently been declared as
true by a Haarlem (Netherlands) based Judge in a separate case. SBM was also seeking that
Jonathan be ordered to publish a statements of apology in the UK and Dutch financial press
and prior to the case being heard obtained an ex-parte freezing order over his house from
the Court in Rotterdam.
11. (September 2016 onwards) The continued chasing of Jonathan by the Public Prosecutor in the Principality of Monaco where the Absolute Monarchy's sweetheart and biggest
private sector employer, SBM, that has been celebrated in Monegasque stamps, reported
him for attempted extortion (as opposed to what was actually an employment dispute after
he left the company without a job to go to in June 2012 because he was unwilling to
participate in cover-up by SBM of its massive fraud); in September 2014. Jonathan was not
informed of the allegations made against him by the Monaco investigating judge until three
years after the reporting, before the case was dismissed by the Monaco Correctional Court.
It should be stressed that regardless of what Article 6 of the European Convention
on Human Rights states on a fair and timely trial, the Prosecutor in Monaco continued to
pursue Jonathan. The Monegasque Prosecutor chose not to prosecute a single individual
from SBM, involved in one of the biggest corporate scandals this century for their plotting
and executing many of the bribes-for-contracts not 400 metres from his office. Certain of
such individuals who have left SBM remain resident in Monaco;
12. (November 2017) The imprisonment of SBM's former CEO, the Brit Tony Mace (36
months and US$ 150,000 fine) in Houston and a former SBM US salesman, Robert Zubiate
(30 months and US$ 50,000) for offences relating to fraud (SBM's Brazilian agent, Julio
Faerman had already been incarcerated for 28 years for offences related to the fraud);
13. (November 2014 onwards) The fining of SBM of a total of US$ 834.9 Million to date (in
November 2017 by the US Department of Justice for US$ 238 Million in addition to the fine
of US$ 240 Million imposed on SBM by the Dutch Public Prosecutor in November 2014); US$
347 Million (by the Brazilian Prosecutor), CHF 7 Million and US$ 2.2 Million by the Dutch
regulator of listed companies the AFM).... and counting
14. Successfully procuring the cross examination of the current CEO, Bruno Chabas, former
ethics chief and currently sitting on the Supervisory Board of SBM, Sietze Hepkema, and
former De Brauw Blackstone partner instructed by SBM during investigation of the bribery
scandal, Jaap de Keijzer, in Haarlem in May 2019 and January 2020. This led to Chabas being
called a “common criminal” by Jonathan, Hepkema being reported for perjury and an appeal
against the decision of the judge being filed to allow de Keijzer plead client-attorney
privilege (appeal subsequently won by de Keijzer who was therefore reprieved from giving
evidence).
15. In March 2020, Didier Keller, former CEO of SBM Offshore (preceding Tony Mace) was
fined approximately Euros 500,000 by the Swiss Public Prosecutor for fraud related
offences. The majority of the evidence used to prosecute Keller was sourced from Jonathan
upon him visiting the investigating judges in Lausanne, Switzerland in October 2018.
16. On 30 July 2020 Jonathan was arrested at Dubrovnik airport under an Interpol Red
Notice for “Bribery/Corruption”. After five nights in custody and the decision to keep him
remanded in custody was successfully appealed, he was granted bail after the payment of a
bond of 120,000 Croatian Kuna, the surrendering of his passport and the requirement to
report twice a week to the police station in Dubrovnik to sign in.
17. On 1 September 2020, the First Instance Court in Dubrovnik granted Monaco’s request
for Jonathan’s extradition. This decision was appealed at the Croatian Supreme Court in
Zagreb.
18. The decision was partially overturned by the Supreme Court on 12 October 2020. It
instructed the Court in Dubrovnik to find out whether the UK Authorities wished to
extradite Jonathan as they would have precedence over Monaco’s request. Additionally, thebCourt in Dubrovnik was instructed to establish whether Jonathan would be subject to capital
punishment and torture if he were sent to Monaco. The UK’s National Crime Agency
reverted to the Court in Dubrovnik that it did not want to extradite Jonathan as he was not
being investigated for anything in the UK. Monaco reverted stating that Jonathan would not
be subject to capital punishment or torture. On 31 December 2020, having received the
answers to the Supreme Court’s questions the Court in Dubrovnik once again ruled that
Jonathan should be extradited to Monaco. This decision was subsequently appealed and
the matter returned the Supreme Court in Zagreb.
19. Earlier in December 2020 the Red Notice under which Jonathan was originally detained
on 30 July 2020 was cancelled by INTERPOL at the request of Monaco who sought to arrange
Jonathan’s visit to Monaco on a voluntary basis through his French counsel, William
Bourdon. The plan was for Jonathan to be interrogated on 17 December 2020. It therefore
became clear that the Red Notice should never have been issued in the first place given
Jonathan had not been charged with any offence in Monaco and, accordingly, there was not
(i) a trial or (ii) a sentence awaiting Jonathan. Ultimately the Monaco meeting neverboccurred after Monaco’s Public Prosecutor denied Croatia’s request (as required under extradition protocol) that it provide it with written confirmation that the extradition requestbbe lifted.
20. Whilst in Croatia Jonathan has the support of over 24 NGOs, a cross party group of
significant British MPs, after Jonathan’s MP, The Right Honourable Caroline Noakes MP and
multiple media outlets across the world against Monaco’s abuse of the Interpol red notice
arrest process particularly in light of the fact that it never sought to extradite Jonathan in
the UK where he lived at the same address over the six years since SBM reported him to the
Authorities at the Principality. In August 2020, SBM informed the Daily Telegraph that it had
withdrawn its complaint against Jonathan, “years ago”
21. In June 2021, five national publications simultaneously published a story about SBM’s
current CEO, Bruno Chabas illicitly signing off on the payment of over US 35 Million to
Angolan kleptocrats. To date Mr Chabas has yet to have been prosecuted for this crime.
22. In July 2021, after the Croatian Supreme Court had determined that Jonathan should be
extradited, the Croatian Minister of Justice overturned the Court’s decision and allowed
Jonathan to freely return to the United Kingdom.
23. In October 2021, Jonathan travelled to Monaco of his own volition to meet with the
investigating Judge, Ludovic Leclerk who interviewed him for six hours before Jonathan
could freely travel back to the United Kingdom.
24. In March 2022, Ludovic Leclerk dismisses the investigation against Jonathan, only for
the Public Prosecutor of Monaco Valérie Sagné, to appeal that decision. The Appeal was
refused after three Criminal Appeal Court Judges upheld the decision of the Investigating
Judge that Jonathan, “had no case to answer.”
25. The Brazilian repercussions of Jonathan’s actions:
(a) Jonathan’s exposé is widely recognised as pushing the first domino which led to the
impeachment of the former head of Petrobras and President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff and
the discrediting of her Political Party (illicitly funded by SBM), the Workers Party, this after
scores of millions of Brazilians protested in over 50 Brazilian cities in support of her removal;
(b) The resignation of the CEO and entire Board of the Brazilian national oil company,
Petrobras, once the most valuable company (by market capitalisation) in the southern
hemisphere, in February 2015 (at one point the company lost over US$ 200 billion in market
value as a result of the exposure of its corrupt activities and has since successfully sued in
certain class actions for US$ 2.95 Billion);
(c) A run on the Brazilian Real and a fall of Brazil into recession;
(d) The imprisonment of scores of leading industrialists and politicians in Brazil (as
a consequence of his whistleblowing many other related bribing activities were exposed in
the ensuing, and continuing, investigations);
(e) The charging of certain current and former SBM executives by the Brazilian Public
Prosecutor in December 2015 (including the current CEO, Bruno Chabas),
(f) The imprisonment of Brazil's former (and now current) President (in office
immediately before Dilma Rousseff) Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in April 2018 for fraud related
offences;
(g) Jonathan being visited in the UK by eight Brazilian MPs (preceded by a telephone
conference with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth South America desk, Brazil desk and UK’s Ambassador to Brazil), and later three members of the now defunct federal police
department of national contracts, called the CGU;
(h) Making headline news in Brazil on two separate days in 2015 following the revelation
arising out of Jonathan’s interview with Folha de S.Paulo and the follow-up comments of
Aecio Neves (loser of the October 2014 Brazilian Presidential run off with Dilma
Rousseff) about him in the Brazilian Senate, and the visit of the said eight Brazilian MPs ;
(i) The banning of SBM from tendering for any new business in Brazil (SBM's major
market where it has won contracts - by paying bribes - worth over US$ 27 Billion) for over
five years.
Most of the above has been widely reported in the Dutch and Brazilian press and latterly the
British, French and Croatia press (written and televisual) who still report on Jonathan’s
story.
His mission
Who is Jonathan Taylor?
His mission
To educate, empower and engage other whistleblowers, corporations and governments. Being prosecuted for doing the right thing has opened his eyes to mistreatment of other corporate whistleblowers. It is important to protect those brave individuals who decide to speak up against corruption no matter what. After learning the devastating con
To educate, empower and engage other whistleblowers, corporations and governments. Being prosecuted for doing the right thing has opened his eyes to mistreatment of other corporate whistleblowers. It is important to protect those brave individuals who decide to speak up against corruption no matter what. After learning the devastating consequences that corruption brings to tax payers, share holders and trust in institutions he decided to take action by continuing to take action. As an engaging speaker and an inspiring professional he brings great value to anyone who holds honesty, transparency and lawfulness in highest regard.