Talk:Unaoil

Subscriber-only article
[3] leads to a subscriber-only article and is therefore not accessible to everyone. Fir3w411 24 (talk) 02:30, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Anyone can read it if they know the trick. (Copy link, paste link into Google search box, click on Google search result – The Australian's paywall, like many newspaper paywalls, allows free access when coming from Google.) In any case, there is no problem on Wikipedia with using non-freely available sources (such as subscription information services or printed books). SJK (talk) 06:59, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
 * But it will really be better to replace the source with one that does not have this requirement. For now I have added the subscription required template to the source. Lklundin (talk) 08:53, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
 * It turns out that the subscription requiring articles in The Australian are written by the journalists who later broke the corruption story based on the email leak. Even with the subscription requirement, I think this source is preferable. Lklundin (talk) 09:21, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Where is the news?
Given the importance of the bribery story, and the companies implicated, some concern has been expressed that this has not been reported by 'mainstream media'. The largest sources of articles, having been parties to the original leak, are Australian newspaper The Age (owned by Fairfax Media Ltd), and the Huffington Post. This article at Naked Capitalism, for instance, makes the point stated by its headline, Mainstream Media Ignores Blockbuster Expose of Massive Bribery in Iraq by Unaoil.

I am not a regular reader of Naked Capitalism and cannot vouch for its 'Wikipediaworthiness', but do think the point is validly raised. While various authorities are apparently taking the issue seriously, most international media has ignored this issue. A Google (Australia, but with locale set as US) search on 11 February 2017 for Unaoil provides me with the top 50 rankings (of about 80,900 results). I should acknowledge that I exported this with the use of a Chrome extension named SEOquake.

The 'top 50' include 21 results from the following 'significant' (i.e. I recognise the name as being 'popular' and 'newsie') sites:


 * The Age (Australia) has ranks 1 and 2, but no others.
 * Wikipedia is at number 3.
 * Huffington Post has items at 4 and 27.
 * Unaoil (the company) has its own site placed at number 5. The search also produced links to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn at ranks 9, 11 and 15 respectively.
 * In 6th place is the Sydney Morning Herald, another Australian (and Fairfax) publication.
 * Ranks 7 and 8 are taken up by The Guardian - finally, another international media source! Mainstream?  I will take the reader's advice on that.
 * Into rank 10 steps Forbes. I assume that is considered mainstream.
 * We now have to jump to rank 16, where The Independent (UK) finds a place for itself.
 * Rank 17 is taken by the Wall Street Journal, and we have really hit the mainstream. Wait, it's only their 'blogs' section - but at least News Limited is there.
 * 20th on the list is the Australian Financial Review - another Fairfax paper.
 * At 21st place we have a Reuters article... the news is hitting the wires! 12 hours ago.
 * 24th of 50 is Bloomberg, with a stock snapshot.
 * Summarising the final 3, they are Daily Kos at 35th, CNN at 41 (with a generic search page), and the Financial Times in 45th.

Many of these results relate to very recent articles about investigations based upon the leaks, into ABB Ltd and Rolls Royce. Most are dated well after the original publications, indicating that large US and UK sources generally ignored what is a pretty big story when it first broke. The first only article I can find by searching Forbes is one dated 26 July 2016, about the UK Serious Fraud Office launching an investigation. There appears to be nothing about the original leak!

Reuters shows many more results, with its first article about the company in November 2014 about some joint agreement it had signed with another company. It then lists four articles on 1 April 2016, all covering the Monaco authorities' raid of Unaoil offices and all published within one hour and eight minutes of one another. Reuters goes on to publish three 'stockwatch' items on 4 April 2016, and a fourth article on that day saying that Eni CEO denied any links with Unaoil. Its press digest of 11 May 2016 links to an article in The Independent, stating that the Panama Papers (remember them, anyone?) showed that BP hired the company after the bribery scandal revealed by the Sydney Morning Herald in 2013. Wait, WHAT? Is that the one mentioned in three sentences at the beginning of the 'Allegations of Bribery' section of this Wikipedia entry?

It appears that  extremely serious allegations  have been made regarding Unaoil, on at least two occasions. This current Unaoil entry on Wikipedia seems staggeringly inadequate to the allegations, but to some extent this is explained by the paucity of coverage by international news entities.

I recommend that:


 * 1) this section of the entry be re-examined, with the intent being to identify and quote relevant news coverage in proportion to the allegations and/or findings of bribery/corrupt activities;
 * 2) Unaoil's denial of the claims, and its own claim of extortion (a claim that appears to be supported by News Limited via The Australian's pronouncements of righteousness in reportage) be added; and
 * 3) a link to the Naked Capitalism article, or if that publication is not considered to be a useful source some other source that records the lack of coverage of these serious events, be included and discussed in the same section of this entry.

I may be able to make these changes myself, but have limited time, limited Wikipedia 'experience', and have spent both today simply identifying and seeking to quantify in some way the concern about how this issue has been covered in the press and consequently in this Wikipedia entry. Comments/responses that present different perspectives on the company and the claims against it are welcome/encouraged. Finally, I have uploaded the spreadsheet I used to examine search results (Scribd displays it awfully, so you will need to download the file). It is not at all complex, lacking even the date of each linked article, but readers are welcome to look and draw their own conclusions (or perform their own searches).Ambiguosity (talk) 05:37, 11 February 2017 (UTC)