DHECC - All quiet on the southern front?

Word is that Louis Freeh has brokered a peace treaty between BP and Pat Juneau/Judge Carl Barbier. Not sure what this means for the settlement as a whole, probably not a damn thing in respect to claims actually being paid instead of being logjammed by Freeh and the other court vendors.  495 is here to stay, so between that and Freeh don't expect to see much change in actual claims being paid.

What the peace treaty most likely means is that BP got exactly what they wanted and agreed to stop exposing all the self-dealing Juneau and the PSC have orchestrated....the question is what exactly did BP get.  

BP drops their attempt to remove Juneau, Jessica Batt and her husband (PricewaterhouseCoopers employee) conveniently land jobs in merry old England shipping out the main witness that could be deposed to find out what deal McNamee made with Juneau, the McGladrey whistleblower goes MIA (I hope the person is physically ok), Freeh continues to fucksnu as many claims as he can while billing millions a month along with the other court vendors.....everyone is in great shape except the people who were actually affected by the oil spill.

The burning question....did Barbier concede anything to BP in order to get them to play nice.  I'm sure we'll find out when he decides how much BP will pay in fines.  If he low balls it, you'll know why.

Meanwhile....In-Hale checks in with the latest casualty report:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "DHECC - One big happy family": 

Why isn’t BP bellyaching about Admin expense? 

Taken from the Discretionary Review Notice. Unlike the appeals these are not numbered page 2 of 17. 

http://www.deepwaterhorizoneconomicsettlement.com/reporting.php 

Currently we have 27,340 offers made to the Coastal Property owners with 20,745 Unique Claimants required to sign a release.

Here’s the game once you sign the release you have 6 months to file all other claims. The delays and changing requirements for rental properties have ran out the clock for most of these claimants all by design. These claimants will never see a penny for the lost rental income caused by the spill. 

This is the first DC ruling; now watch the Other Denials numbers grow as these claimants learn about deadlines. 

Patrick the PSC and the Court Vendors saved every dollar these guys charged BP to administrate the settlement plus billions more. 

“The Program denied this claim twice. The Appeal Panel reversed, finding that a claimant may file multiple Coastal Real Property claims for the same property. Here, claimant filed a Coastal Real Property claim with the CSSP in August 2013, was compensated and signed a CSSP Release. The CSSP Release was executed as required by the Settlement Agreement (see Section 4.4.1.0 and Exhibit 26). Once that was done, no further Coastal Real Property claims as to that parcel of real property can be processed. The CSSP Release effects a release of all of the claimant's potential claims save and except for the limited right to assert "additional claims" within six (6) months as provided in Section 4.4.8 of the Settlement Agreement. The Court finds that the reference to "additional claims" in Section 4.4.8 does not include claims of the same claim type relative to the same parcel of land. Thus, a second Coastal Real Property Claim may not be processed and paid on this property. This is how the Claims Administrator has consistently interpreted and applied the Settlement Agreement and the Court agrees with that interpretation.”

IN-HALE  

Also, I'm curious about this comment Kevin left last night.  Usually, when he leaves comments like this it turns out to have legs.  I'm having a hard time believing a PSC firm could file a claim for losses incurred by their own firm...and if they did was that claim expedited?   

Kevin has left a new comment on your post "DHECC - Comment Bump, March 8, 2015": 

There are class counsel whose private law practices are located within settlement zones where other law practices were found by the DHECC to be members of the Economic and Property Damages Settlement Class (pre-495).

I haven't scoured the massive settlement document, but after a reasonable search I haven't been able to find any language that says the class counsel and their law practices are excluded from the settlement. Would someone please point me to the page(s) in the settlement document?

If there is no such exclusion, can someone be class counsel and their firm be a class member in this settlement? Have any class counsel or their firm(s) received any BEL or IEL awards from the DHECC?

DHECC - The Mamas, The Papas, and the orphaned children of the Gulf Coast

- "And no one's getting fat except Mama Cass..."

...and Juneau, the PSC, Louis Freeh, the court vendors....just not the people actually affected by the oil spill.

Tuesday, Kyle Barnett of the Louisiana Record published this nuclear bombshell:

McGladrey whistleblower claims Deepwater Horizon audit deeply flawed

Although it's been met with little fanfare in the mainstream media cycle, if this whistleblower's story is true it has the elements of an Arthur Andersen/Enron debacle.

Disclosure:  I was aware of the whistleblower's claims (as were other reporters who have followed this story) before Barnett published his post.  I have seen the whistleblower's original allegations and I can tell you they go much deeper than what Barnett was able to publish.  There are some highly salacious elements to the story that could possibly implicate a collusion between court vendor PwC (Pricewaterhouse Coopers) and McGladrey in how the audit was carried out....if you could even call it an audit....but I can't comment on all of it at the moment.

As Barnett pointed out, BP filed with Barbier's court to obtain the initial versions of the audit and was denied.  No surprise there, Barbier's only goal is to run interference for Juneau, the PSC, the Freeh Group and the chosen court vendors who are racking up millions while the people who have suffered the most along the Gulf have been orphaned in the wake of Act 495.

Barnett also notes the whistleblower's report calls out McGladrey team leader for the DHECC audit, Mark McNamee, for essentially running up the bill without a real game plan in place to accurately assess the success or failure of the settlement.  The whistleblower claims McNamee told the auditing team, "The client is willing to pay whatever costs that we incur during this engagement as long as we can get the job done."  McNamee also allegedly encouraged the McGladrey team members to stay in New Orleans on the weekends and yuck it up on the company expense account while filing billable hours to the DHECC.

There is second player mentioned in the whistleblower's complaint that was not mentioned in the Louisiana Record story, McGladrey Risk Advisor Service Manager, Jessica Batt.  Batt served as an executive member on the BP audit team and worked very closely with McNamee according to the information laid out in the ethics complaint.

Someone in the comment section of the LR story is obviously aware of the content in the whistleblower's complaint referencing Jessica Batt's complicity in helping McNamee run up the bill without having any real direction on the audit itself. While I can't go too deep into all of the allegations, I will mention a quote attributed to Batt by the whistleblower, "We don't want to have anything in writing that PwC (secondary auditors) could hold us to."

That quote is pregnant because according to the ethics complaint Jessica Batt may have had some inside knowledge as to exactly what issues PwC would have held McGladrey to due to the fact that she was married to a manager at PwC, Scott Batt (at the time of the audit that is).  The whistleblower points out that McGladrey's Code of Ethics prohibits their employees from "working on any audit where immediate family members are either employed by or have significant interest (investments, loans, etc.) of the entity that is being audited."  PwC would certainly have been a company examined in the audit being a court vendor for the settlement and the primary accounting firm processing claims in the DHECC.

The whistleblower also notes in the ethics complaint that he seriously doubts BP told McNamee to run up whatever costs were needed to "get the job done".

But what I think "Toots McGladrey" may be missing is that it most likely wasn't BP who stroked the blank check, it was more likely the actual client, Claims Administrator Pat Juneau.  When the initial drafts of the audit came in and suggested that upwards of 50% of the claims examined did not have proper documentation and could be considered "fraudulent" I suspect Juneau then made the offer to McNamee to run the bill up through the goddamn roof...13x the original estimate (see Louis Freeh)...  as long as the audit turned out benign.

It's no wonder Judge Barbier is blocking BP's attempt to see all the audit materials.  If the judge knew Juneau approved of the excessive billing, it could hang not only Juneau but Barbier himself and it's hard to imagine he wasn't aware of the progress of the audit and ballooning costs.

What's painfully apparent is that this settlement has been fucksnu'd to the point where the administrative costs by the court vendors have expanded into a completely alternate galaxy while the existing one the settlement was created for (to compensate the people of the Gulf Coast for the damages from the oil spill) is collapsing in on itself.  Act 495 and the energy and resources sucked out by the black hole (The Freeh Group and court vendors like McGladrey) have cannibalized the DHECC.

If these whistleblowers's allegations prove true, Pat Juneau should resign immediately.  McNamee should be deposed to find out exactly what Juneau told him regarding the audit and McGladrey's expenses.  Don't hold your breath on Freeh actually doing his job there but even an outside entity, preferably the FBI, should investigate the matter as it clearly suggests payroll fraud.  I suppose they'll get to that as soon as they finish with Double Bill Cassidy....not. 

Just to pour salt in the wound, I'll leave you with this recent comment by AZ reader and contributor In-Hale:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "DHECC - from Omega to the Alpha with love": 

After posting the $ 795 MILLION DOLLARS IN CLAIM OFFERS THAT VAPORIZED on Nov 22, 2014 little has changed. These were offers accepted but BP appealed and lost them they were just waiting on the processed payment. 

The Appeals Coordinator sent them back to the accountants for new calculations under Policy 495 and what does BP do?

Appeals the new offers!!!!

Today's stats 1/14/15 chart 7 demonstrates little to know appeals resolved with a spike in appeals filed.

Table 5 now has the gap between Accepted offers vs. Pay offers growing again to just under 400 million.

We now have another 158 Businesses receiving Exclusion Denials along with their employees and another 900 Businesses receiving Incomplete Denials.

I guess it’s now safe to say that the only thing this settlement resolved was BP liability. Based on the definition to even refer to calling this a settlement would be FRAUD.

Time to replace the PSC or expand it with qualified litigators. My research on the PSC shows little to no experienced members were included just a group of Monty Hall’s from Let’s Make A Deal that took door number 1 worth $600 million.

IN-HALE