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MI6 agent joined disgraced BP boss in secret meetings with Gaddafi


By Glen Owen
Last updated at 8:44 AM on 30th August 2009
New questions about the extent of the Government’s involvement in the trade deals that led to the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, were raised last night with the revelation that an MI6 agent flew to Libya with former BP boss Lord Browne for two cloak-and-dagger meetings with Colonel Gaddafi.

Jeff Chevalier, the ex-lover of Lord Browne, has told The Mail on Sunday that Browne was ‘shocked’ when the agent made a reference to his relationship with Mr Chevalier, indicating the authorities knew about their liaison, which was a closely guarded secret.





Negotiations: Lord Browne, former BP chief, and Colonel Gaddafi, who kept the peer waiting for 24 hours in the desert


Mr Chevalier said Lord Browne also referred to Mark Allen, the MI6 counter-terrorism chief at the centre of the secret talks between Libya and Britain, who now works for BP.

But he did not know if Allen was the agent who accompanied the peer to Libya.

Lord Browne’s secret missions started shortly after international sanctions were lifted on Libya in 2003, prompting an ‘oil rush’ by companies keen to win lucrative contracts – and with the Government lobbying hard on BP’s behalf.

Although Gaddafi agreed to hand over Megrahi for trial as part of negotiations to lift sanctions, oil industry insiders claim BP’s attempts to win business were hampered by objections to the Lockerbie bomber’s detention.

Mr Chevalier, who spent four years in a relationship with Lord Browne, recalled that the BP boss made his first trip to Libya accompanied by the unnamed MI6 agent.

The 2004 trip was so secret that the landing strip where Lord Browne touched down was not recognised by navigation equipment as an airport.


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Mr Chevalier said: ‘He spoke clearly and in detail about it. John [Lord Browne] said he had been taken aback at the amount of information the agent knew about him.

‘The MI6 man, or ex-MI6 man – I got the impression he might have recently left the service – began by asking, “So how are Jeff’s studies coming along?”, an attempt to let John know how much they knew.

John’s personal life was not so personal to the intelligence services.

‘On the way over, the pilots insisted the co-ordinates did not indicate an airport but sure enough they found a landing strip in the middle of nowhere.’
Mr Chevalier also recalled how Lord Browne had been furious that Gaddafi had kept him waiting for 24 hours.

‘John called me, fuming about the wait and threatening to leave in protest,’ he said.

‘But finally a convoy of vehicles equipped with female Bulgarian soldiers – I never understood why – came.’

Mr Chevalier said Lord Browne had spoken to Gaddafi in ‘broad terms’ about a contract to exploit Libyan oil fields, and had followed it up with a second visit within 12 months.

The negotiations led to a £54million deal being signed in 2007, BP’s first in the country since the Libyan oil industry was nationalised in 1974.

The detente process between the UK and Libya had started in 2003 after Gaddafi secretly passed a letter to Downing Street indicating he wanted to end Libya’s status as a pariah nation.

Discussions then followed between Gaddafi’s son Saif and Allen, then head of counter-terrorism at MI6.

Sir Mark Allen, as he has since become, is now a senior executive with BP.

Lord Browne was forced to resign from BP after he admitted lying to the High Court about his relationship with Mr Chevalier during an unsuccessful attempt to gag a Mail on Sunday investigation into his business activities.