Updated: June 2024

Jonathan Taylor alerted the authorities to large-scale, systematic corruption in the oil industry. His disclosures about SBM Offshore led to criminal prosecutions and multi-million dollar fines being levied in four countries. Notwithstanding the strong public interest in his actions, Taylor found himself trapped in Croatia for almost a year after a retaliatory Interpol red notice was issued by Monaco, following a criminal complaint laid by his former employer six years earlier.

What happened to Taylor exposes the limitations of whistleblower protections in Europe. In particular, it shows how proceedings for extradition and issuing a red notice, which take place outside legal frameworks for whistleblower protection, can be exploited to harm those who speak out in the public interest.

SBM Offshore is a major player in the international oil industry. The company manufactures and leases floating platforms and other infrastructure that makes offshore oil drilling possible – a lucrative business, for those who win the right contracts. Jonathan Taylor worked for the company for nine years in Monaco as an in-house lawyer before matters came to a head in 2012.

On 31 January Taylor became aware of evidence of bribes being paid by SBM and its intermediaries in Equatorial Guinea, including a series of payments to the son of Equatorial Guinea’s President, Teodoro Obiang. This was the first in a chain of actions that would uncover a multimillion dollar bribery network spanning four continents.

After being asked to investigate, Taylor quickly saw that the problem was systemic, and that paying bribes was simply the way his employers did business. A formal investigation was set up and millions of dollars of corrupt payments were identified.

SBM Offshore were presented with the results of the provisional investigation in April 2012, but company executives settled on a containment strategy, sweeping as much of the scandal under the carpet as they could. In the circumstances, Taylor decided that he had no option but to alert the authorities. He took his findings to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and left SBM shortly thereafter.

Since 2014, SBM Offshore’s activities have been the subject of multi-million dollar settlements with law enforcement agencies in the United States, the Netherlands, Brazil and as recently as November, Switzerland. The company has paid out around US$ 840 million in fines to date. A deferred prosecution agreement reached with authorities in the United States describes a system of “commissions” being paid to public officials and intermediaries in Brazil, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Kazakhstan and Iraq, together with gifts of jewellery, electronics, cars, travel to sporting events and jobs being given to relatives.

Several of the company’s executives and intermediaries have been convicted of corruption-related offences in the United States, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, and some are currently serving prison sentences. It is unclear whether any of this would have happened had Taylor not taken action to prevent the company from covering its tracks.

Several years after his disclosures, Taylor moved back to the UK and found alternative employment. He might have been forgiven for imagining that the SBM Offshore episode of his life was over. But it was not to be. In 2020, he was subjected to serious retaliatory action by his former employer that became an international scandal. What happened to Taylor exposes some of the weaknesses in Europe’s system of whistleblower protection – one which should in theory be the strongest in the world, following the passage of the 2019 EU Whistleblower Directive.

It was only when Taylor was arrested upon arrival at Dubrovnik airport for a family holiday the summer of 2020, that the nature of that retaliation became clear. In an extraordinary abuse of process, the authorities in Monaco issued an Interpol red notice based on allegations made by SBM Offshore about the settlement that ended Taylor’s employment. He was arrested in front of his family, forcibly separated from them and taken into custody for several days. He later told The Times that he “was crushed, bewildered, beyond a state of shock… There were three bunk beds in the prison cell, half a door for the squat toilet. I don’t think you can understand, unless you have been through it, the feeling of the iron door closing.”

Despite the withdrawal of the red notice on the eve of a legal challenge, Taylor was left with no option but to stay in Croatia pending the resolution of his extradition case, a process that would take the best part of a year as the case was passed back and forth between different parts of the Croatian legal system. Extradition proceedings between EU countries typically do not allow whistleblowers to raise a defence that they are being targeted as a result of their public interest disclosures. Monaco merely wanted to question Taylor, whereas for a Red Notice to be issued there must be a trial or sentence awaiting the targeted persons, who are typically war criminals, drug barons, violent offenders and human traffickers.

Taylor’s detention in Croatia caused him significant financial hardship, cost him his job and – unsurprisingly - was detrimental to his wellbeing. There has been a notable absence of official support from the UK, his home country. When Taylor alerted the British embassy in Zagreb to his difficulties, they called the local police instead of offering assistance. As a result, he was held in a psychiatric hospital against his will for 12 hours, after being strapped to a bed and forcibly injected with an unknown substance.

Members of Parliament in the UK raised Taylor’s case on several occasions. But despite a series of appeals from the media and civil society, as well as politicians (after an emergency question was raised in the House of Commons), the British government refused to get involved beyond offering the usual consular assistance given to citizens who find themselves in legal trouble abroad. In the event, Taylor’s ability to leave Croatia was only secured with the intervention of Croatia’s Minister of Justice, Ivan Malenica. In June 2021, Malenica formally rejected Monaco’s extradition request, overturning a decision from Croatia’s Supreme Court in so doing.

Shortly before Malenica made his decision, Jonathan Taylor had shared incriminating documents with the UK’s Serious Fraud Office and a group of international media organisations. These showed that part of a $100 million cancellation fee paid by BP to SBM in November 2011 had been passed on to Baptista Sumbe, a top executive in Angola’s state-owned oil company, Sonangol. Among the issues currently being investigated by Swiss prosecutors are claims that Sumbe had been receiving regular “commission payments” for years from SBM.

Despite successfully evading extradition from Croatia, the threat of SBM’s criminal complaint remains in place. International travel is likely to remain difficult for Taylor until it is resolved. In October 2021, Jonathan Taylor was summoned to Monaco to appear before the investigating judge. He attended along with his lawyers and was able to leave Monaco without issue. An entire year went by before Monaco’s appeal court rejected an attempt by the Prosecutor’s office to reinstate the case, finally bringing Taylor’s seven year ordeal to an end.

In October 2022, Jonathan Taylor welcomed the ruling of the Monaco appeal court, which “will give me back control over my life.” The extradition attempt marked the end of Taylor’s career as a lawyer in the oil and gas industry, wrecked his marriage and cost him a year of his life.

Congratulations to Jonathan Taylor, winner of 2021 Blueprint for Free Speech UK Whistleblowing Prize.

Update: The case against Jonathan Taylor was finally dismissed by investigatory judge Ludovic Leclerc Monaco in March 2022. An appeal against the ruling was dismissed later that year. In January 2024, Taylor launched his own legal action against his former employers SBM Offshore, telling media that he was “seeking justice on a personal level.”