BP has launched a new bid to prevent further compensation payments over the Macondo disaster after looking to block payments from the fund set up to compensate the Gulf of Mexico’s fishing industry.
The British supermajor agreed to pay $2.3billion into a compensation programme for those whose livelihood was directly hit by the spill.
So far $1billion has been paid out, but now BP wants to suspend the rest of the payments while it looks to determine the extent of the alleged fraud by lawyer Mikal Watts.
The company has lodged a civil lawsuit against Watts, alleging he had falsely claimed to represent more than 40,000 people – mainly fishing crews – impacted by the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
“Tens of thousands of Mikal Watts’ ‘clients’ have proved to be phantoms,” said BP communications vice president Geoff Morrell
“Mr. Watts’ false representations improperly inflated the value of potential claims against the Seafood Compensation Program and resulted in an overblown $2.3 billion fund.
“Under these circumstances, BP is not going to stand idly by and allow payments to proceed without first addressing the fraudulent conduct.”
The company has lodged a civil suit with the federal district court in New Orleans, looking to suspend further payments and give the oil firm a hearing into the claims.
The company claims the lawyer that Watts had claimed to represent more than 40,000 deckhands who had seen their income hit by the oil spill after the Macondo explosion in April 2010.
Only eight of the 648 claims he eventually filed under the Seafood Compensation Programme were found to be valid, with 17 further still pending.
Earlier this month a US court upheld a claim by BP that the payout formula for compensation agreed by claims administrator Patrick Juneau was too generous.
Further payouts from the $9.3billion fund had been halted pending a decision on appeals.