''Beyond Business''

a must read..............From New Left Project
By Jamie

''I'm reading Greg Palast's terrific Vultures' Picnic, and came across a remarkable story concerning Lord Browne. Browne, you might recall, chaired the commission that produced the eponymous Browne Review, which effectively recommended the marketisation of British higher education.

Prior to 2007, when he resigned after lying in court, Browne was the CEO of British Petroleum (BP). As a senior company official he oversaw BP's efforts to get its hands on Azerbaijani oil in the early 1990s, part of a broader scramble by Western oil companies to exploit the resources of newly independent post-Soviet states. Production in Azerbaijan was at that point fairly low, but its potential, with access to massive deposits under the Caspian Sea, was huge.[1] As Browne tells it, in his aptly titled memoir Beyond Business,

In case that didn't seal the deal—and here is where Palast helps fill in the details—the British arranged for a $30 million sweetener to be delivered to the Azeri State Oil Company (SOCAR). The cheque arrived with Thatcher, Heseltine and the hot tub; it was then passed to Lord Browne, who handed it to BP 'Bagman' Leslie Abrahams, with instructions to deliver it to President Elchibey directly and in private.[5] Abrahams was the head of BP's 'XFI' unit, whose job was to provide bribes in the form of cash and prostitutes to help grease oil deals.[6] Such lubrication of large oil deals appears to be the norm. As a charming BP official heading out to Central Asia in the wake of the USSR's collapse informed Palast, 'The world runs on oil... and oil runs on payoffs and pussy'.[7] David Graeber, recalling Neil Bush's (Dubya's brother) admission of infidelities with women who would 'mysteriously appear at his hotel-room door after important business meetings in Thailand and Hong Kong', observes that this element of big business—in which 'sex, drugs, music, extravagant displays of food, and the potential for violence' play significant roles—is often expunged from economic history, producing 'a sanitized view of the way actual business is conducted'.[8]''

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