The Kremlin poisoned BP's chief executive Robert Dudley back in 2008 when he was the head of Rosneft-BP joint venture TNK-BP, a former employee of the company told the Daily Telegraph, after last week Dudley told media by way of a joke that if he could give his younger self any advice, it would be "Stay away from Russia."
The Telegraph's source, Ilya Zaslavsky, said the poisoning had been confirmed to him by another source "close to Dudley" and that its purpose was to force Dudley to leave TNK-BP. "I don't know the symptoms but I do know they were sufficient for him to get very concerned. It wasn't like regular food poisoning. It wasn't just once. It was happening over weeks. The poisoning had to be done by professionals to make sure that Dudley did not die. They just wanted to give him a message," Zaslavsky told the British daily.
Zaslavsky currently works for a U.S.-based anti-Kremlin think tank named The Free Russia Foundation. He believes the MI6 should have done something about Dudley's alleged poisoning: according to him, Dudley fled the country, fearing for his life in 2008. The New Yorker reported that year that Dudley had left Russia after learning the police was coming for him. The magazine also said Dudley had become paranoid about his office being bugged and that he had felt unwell after eating.
Zaslavsky went on to add that Dudley was not the only target of the alleged poisoning: another 150 TNK-BP employees were also targeted.
Dudley was at the helm of TNK-BP for nine year before the UK-based supermajor and the Russian state giant agreed on a deal that would see TNK-BP be absorbed by Rosneft, with BP receiving a 19.75-percent stake in the Russian company. Last week, Dudley said BP has a "very strong" partnership with Rosneft, but would rather stay away from politics amid the possibility of further Western sanctions against Moscow, which he said were being handed out like "train tickets."
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry. More
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