Full-force campaign to derail investigative work by Fairfax journalists … Legal threats and PR spin … The Australian signed-up to the attack – in the process looking more than usually foolish … “Reputation” restoration based on fallacies … International corporate bribery specialists claim to be blackmailed … The flow of emails … Janek Drevikovsky reports
Just three years prior, the pair was on the verge of suing Fairfax Media over the same allegations which now form the basis of their criminal convictions.
The brothers, Cyrus and Saman, are scions of the Monaco-based Ahsani family, which established Unaoil in 1991. Since then, the Ahsanis, originally from Iran, “provided industrial solutions” to Western businesses hunting for a slice of the Middle Eastern oil market.
In 2015, journalists at the Fairfax papers (as they then were) received a trove of documents, which purported to reveal Unaoil’s involvement in corruption across the world.
According to the documents, Unaoil had bribed officials, rigged tender committees and even placed prime ministers on retainer. Apparently, these illegal dealings went on for 17 years across nine countries, mostly in the Middle East for clients that included Leighton Holdings.
The documents included emails and corporate files and were leaked by someone close to Unaoil, whose identity has never been disclosed.
Led by reporter Nick McKenzie, investigative journalists at The Age and The Huffington Post broke the story in early 2016, setting up a special multi-page website to do so. Unaoil was “the bribe factory”, they claimed, and had “perfected the art of corruption”.
The investigation and exposure of this global corruption was subject to sustained assault from lawyers, hired PR guns and even rivals at News Corp. It’s an indication of the scale of the perils confronting worthwhile public interest journalism.
The company and the Ahsani family retained Kennedys partner Rebekah Giles, who specialises in “reputational risk”.
Writing to The Age’s lawyer Peter Bartlett at Minter Ellison, Ms Giles said her clients were “seriously considering the options available to it, including with respect to commencing proceedings against your client for damages. and potentially engaging law enforcement authorities to investigate any assistance given by third parties to those involved in the extortion of our client ”.
In June 2016, The Australian reported that Unaoil would soon sue for injurious falsehood, seeking “many millions of dollars, possibly hundreds of millions of dollars” in damages. Ms Giles was quoted as saying:
“Unaoil will devote its resources to ensuring that it holds Fairfax Media and its partners to account for their irresponsible and injurious reporting.”
One of Unaoil’s main contentions was that it had been a victim of blackmail. According to Hedley Thomas report in The Australian, the alleged extortionist, who called himself Komrade, claimed he had hacked into Unaoil and stolen sensitive documents. If he wasn’t paid $US5 million in bitcoin, he would release the damaging files to the media. All this, apparently, was going on at the same time as the Fairfax investigation.
It is understood that Hedley Thomas was “assisted” by Salamanda Davoudi from Tancredi, the London based PR agents for the Ahsanis. In an interview he gave to Thomas, Saman Ahsani heavily implied the extortionist and Fairfax’s source were one and the same:
“The extortionists themselves said that they would leak to news organisations including in Australia. The emails that the Fairfax group received are from the same batch of archived emails that were stolen.”
Ms Giles went into print in an article of her own for The Australian, which questioned Fairfax’s methods, including the steps they took to verify the documents. The article left no doubt that Unaoil believed the journalists were “an instrument in blackmail”.
Fairfax rejected Unaoil’s claims. No-one had known about the extortionist during the investigation, senior editors said, and the source presented as a “white hat” whistleblower who never once asked for money.
The journalists at The Age apparently thought it possible something other than their source was the extortionist. Some thought it was odd that, when they sought comment from Unaoil in the weeks before publishing, the reply they received made no mention of blackmail.
After the investigation went public, Unaoil’s full attention turned to the blackmailer. Through its lawyer, Fairfax was chided for choosing “to largely ignore [the extortion] in its reporting of these matters”.
A few months later, Fairfax received another letter from Kennedys, this time demanding the identity of their source. The letter claimed Unaoil was considering legal action against the source itself.
Peter Bartlett refused to identify the leaker. He pointed out the UK’s Serious Fraud Office had announced it had “compelling grounds to suspect corruption on the part of” Unaoil.
Unaoil’s next step was to scrutinise emails apparently sent from Nick McKenzie’s private email account.
The company claimed the emails were forwarded to it by the alleged extortionist, who said the original recipient was an “ex-Unaoil employee”. The name and address of this recipient was redacted.
One email refers to “the information you have”, suggesting the recipient may have been the source or an associate.
One of the emails claims Unaoil was waging a campaign against Fairfax.
“We believe Cyrus Ahsani is trying to undermine us or set us up as reporters who lack ethics or somehow cannot be trusted … We are reliably informed Cyrus has hired people to trap us into doing something he can use to attack us”.
The emails also express concern that Fairfax might be in trouble if Cyrus Ahsani could claim the documents were illegally obtained.
Through Ms Giles, Unaoil sent Fairfax a long list of questions about the emails, including the following:
Fairfax declined to respond.
By early 2017, proceedings seemed imminent. Ms Giles again wrote to Fairfax, saying she would apply for preliminary discovery against Fairfax Media, The Age Company and several of the investigative journalists.
The Australian’s Chris Merritt wrote that the application was a “determined effort to unmask the confidential sources who gave reporters Nick McKenzie and Richard Baker the documents that formed the basis for the articles about Unaoil and kickbacks”.
Apparently, no proceedings were ever issued.
Ms Giles told Justinian that she no longer acts for Unaoil or the Ahsani family and could not comment on whether her former clients were still contemplating legal action.
When asked whether Fairfax should have done more to verify the source, she said “speaking generally, in circumstances where materials are obtained through criminal means, responsible journalism dictates that one should authenticate the documents”.
Cyrus and Saman Ahsani will be sentenced by a US judge early in 2020.