BP Misconduct Claims on Payments Unfounded, Official Says

BP Misconduct Claims on Payments Unfounded, Official Says:

BP Plc’s allegations of misconduct in the program set up to pay claims in the settlement over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill are unfounded, the administrator of the program said.Patrick Juneau, the administrator, Monday asked U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, who is overseeing the litigation connected to the spill, to reject the company’s bid to temporarily halt payments.BP “has failed to submit evidence that would even arguably justify the granting of such an overbroad request,” Juneau’s lawyers said in a filing in federal court in New Orleans. BP’s “global aspersions” on the claims office’s “internal controls and fraud detection systems and processes are uninformed and baseless,” they said.Barbier last month rejected the company’s request to stop the payments while Louis Freeh, former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, probes allegations of misconduct in the claims program.BP renewed the request Aug. 5, citing “new evidence of more widespread and potentially systemic improprieties” in the claims program. BP said this evidence was uncovered through a fraud hotline the company set up.

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