"So we arm the rebels and direct them to do our bidding... et voila!" 'Development' Minister Alan Duncan is the delighted psychopath on the right.
The government has admitted that the international development minister, Alan Duncan, took part in meetings between officials operating a Whitehall cell to control the Libyan oil market and Vitol - a company for which Duncan has previously acted as a consultant.
The "Libyan oil cell" involved a group of officials working in the Foreign Office since May waging a quiet campaign against Muammar Gaddafi's regime by controlling the flow of oil in the country.
It is said to have played a discreet but crucial role in the campaign in Libya by helping to enforce the sanctions regime to prevent Gaddafi importing and exporting oil while allowing oil to reach the rebels in the east. That oil came via one company, Vitol.
Duncan, a former oil trader and multi-millionaire, has had a 30-year friendship with the managing director of Vitol, Ian Taylor, at one point operating as a consultant to the company and as a non-executive director to a subsidiary firm. Taylor has also been a Tory donor, declared on Duncan's parliamentary register of interests.
Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary, said the government's disclosure of the existence of the oil cell was mired in mystery about Duncan's role in it. "Given Alan Duncan's reported links with Vitol this curious briefing from within government actually raises more questions than it answers," he said.
"Libya's oil revenues belong to the Libyan people and as Labour we have supported steps to help the National Transitional Council make use of those resources to rebuild their country after 42 years of Gaddafi's rule."
Downing Street sources confirmed Duncan had been present at some meetings involving officials and Vitol, describing his expertise as crucial to helping officials working on the project understand the complexities of the oil markets.
It is understood Vitol had been working with the rebels in the east before the establishment of the cell but had struggled with the sanctions in place amid concerns that Gaddafi was circumventing the restrictions while the rebels were suffering from them.
"Part of the reason we realised there was a problem was through the intelligence from the industry, which Alan has links to," the source said. "He was not in touch with Benghazi or the rebels at any point. He did not report to the National Security Council. Officials were running it and reporting to NSC."
Civil servants in the Foreign Office are known to have expressed deep concerns about the existence of the cell, warning that it appeared to be encroaching too far on commercial purposes. One person with knowledge of the Whitehall machinations described their mood as "mutinous".
A senior government source with a close understanding of the NSC said Duncan was crucial to the genesis of the cell, but acknowledged the civil service angst, adding: "There's always a certain type of civil servant who thinks the role of civil service is not to be in contact with the real world at all, but the difficulty with that is if you want things to happen you do need to understand what's happening outside the civil service."
Vitol is the largest trader of oil and refined products in the world. The business - named after two Dutchmen that originally founded it as a barge operator in Rotterdam - buys and sells more oil and gas than household names such as BP and Shell.
Vitol handles about 5m barrels a day and controls 200 supertankers and other vessels to move it around the world. The company - officially based officially in Switzerland - does not control the giant oil fields or petrol stations associated with the likes of BP and Shell but does engage in exploration from Russia to West Africa, as well as storage and a host of other activities. It also turns over revenues of more than $140bn (£87bn) in a good year. It has a presence in every leading oil-producing country, including Iraq and Syria.
Taylor has retained a good friendship with Duncan since the two met as oil traders at Shell. The Tory politician sat on the board of oil company Arawak until it was bought in 2009 by Vitol. As shadow leader of the house in 2008 Duncan declared donations in the register of members' financial interests that he received, via the Conservative party, from Taylor.
Vitol was forced to pay $17.5m in fines in 2007 after pleading guilty to providing kickbacks to Saddam's Iraq under the oil-for-food programme.
The business also found itself in court in 1996 over oil deals in Serbia. It transpired that a $1m payment had been made to the Serbian war criminal Arkan and there had been a secret oil deal to provide Slobadan Milosevic's Serbia with fuel.
Vitol always argued the oil was only delivered after sanctions were lifted and the deal was entirely legal.
The company was also investigated in 1993 after selling 280,000 tonnes of "contaminated" oil to Pakistan's state-owned power company causing £100m worth of damage.
Reader Comments
to our Newsletter