Cohen told The Wall Street Journal in November 2008 that the decision to impose a $20 million fine was a "judgment call" made by his office.
"It's not my job to take every nickel from a defendant when they have done something wrong," Nelson said. "Our job is to come up with what we feel is fair and just."
The problem with imposing such a low fine against BP, which reported net profits of about $17.2 billion in 2007, is that it doesn't act as a "deterrent," West said, particularly for a company like BP that was a "repeat offender" like BP.
West said he was told that the reason the DOJ decided on the $20 million fine was because the criminal case against the company for safety and environmental violations resulting from the Texas Refinery explosion, where 15 people were killed and 170 other were injured, was being settled for $50 million, another example, West says, of a "rushed" settlement.
On October 25, 2007, in what can be described as a package deal, BP settled all of its major criminal cases. The corporation pled guilty to a criminal violation of the Clean Water Act and paid the $20 million fine related to the March and August 2006 oil spills that occurred in the North Slope. The EPA said the $20 million fine still represented one of the largest penalties under the Clean Water Act.
That same day, the company also pled guilty to a felony for the Texas City refinery explosion and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ where the company admitted that it manipulated the propane market.
Rep. John Dingell, the Democratic chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, issued a statement the day the settlement was announced excoriating the oil behemoth.
"Congress has held hearing after hearing about BP's mismanagement and now DOJ, [the Commodities Futures Trading Commission] and EPA have imposed criminal fines," Dingell's statement said. "It is troubling that many of the same BP executives who were responsible for the management failures that led to the criminal charges and settlements ... are still employed by BP and, in some cases, have been promoted to the highest levels of the company."
On November 29, 2007, BP formally entered a guilty plea in federal court in Alaska. US District Court Judge Ralph Beistline sentenced BP to three years probation and said the oil spills were a "serious crime" that could have been prevented if BP had spent more time and funds investing in pipeline upgrades and a "little less emphasis on profit."
Four months later, Dingell and Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak (D-Michigan) fired off a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey questioning the rationale behind the DOJ's settlement agreements with the company over the refinery explosion and the oil spill in Alaska. The lawmakers requested documents from the DOJ that may have shed light on a prior decision to "consolidate" all of the pending criminal cases.
Mukasey responded on April 3, 2008, and said the DOJ was "not in a position to disclose non-public information about our prosecutorial decisions."
He did note, however, that while the three criminal plea "agreements were announced together, the agreements were not contingent on one another."
West said Dingell and Stupak didn't push back hard enough.
"They should have brought me in and DOJ officials to testify about the decision Ronald Tenpas made to shut down the case," West said. "When you have a situation like this where a career investigator is going to the Justice Department and saying 'I'm not done' give me a year, six months, three months and the answer is no that's completely unheard of."
The Whistleblower
West's tenure at the EPA after his investigation into BP was shut down was tumultuous. He said the agency tried to fire him over the fact that he continued to be outspoken about the case.
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