A lobbying firm with close links to a former Cabinet minister and the fossil fuels industry is being paid $4.7m to help oil-rich Azerbaijan enhance its image ahead of the crucial UN COP climate summit next month, the i-Paper reveals.
The lobbying giant Teneo, which employs Labor’s former Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw as well as Boris Johnson’s former business chief Alex Hickman, has been awarded a seven-month contract which campaigners claim will help the state “greenwash” its reputation.
An investigation by the i-Paper in conjunction with the newsletter Democracy for Sale and SourceMaterial, reveals that as part of the Teneo contract, one of its British consultants will be paid “a monthly fee of $25,000, plus bonuses totaling $50,000” while only working on a “part-time basis.”
According to US documents, Teneo will provide “media training” and advise on “narrative development” for the hosts of the COP summit.
The lobbying firm’s work will be led by its Global Strategy President Geoff Morrell who is a former executive at oil giant BP, which is Azerbaijan’s biggest foreign investor.
Climate campaign groups have accused Teneo of helping Azerbaijan to “greenwash” its image.
Lela Stanley, senior investigator at Global Witness said: “Firms helping petrostates like Azerbaijan … are complicit in greenwashing.
“Instead of focusing on glossing up their image, Azerbaijan and its partners should be making fossil fuel companies pay in to the UN’s Loss and Damage Fund. Planet-wrecking polluters should pay for the devastation they’ve caused.”
Teneo’s senior managing director is Patrick Loughlan, one of Tony’s Blair’s former Downing Street special advisors and Labor’s former director of policy and head of research.
The firm’s managing director Robert Fuller also spent six weeks volunteering to help Labor during the recent election campaign.
