BP's Secret Ticket Request Line

[ensho]

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/07/bp-secret-ticke...


For more than a decade, BP has operated a hush-hush phone line that California lawmakers can call to request box seats to NBA games and concerts at the Sacramento stadium named after its West Coast subsidiary.

In the past five years, BP has given state officials more than 1,200 complimentary tickets to the Arco Arena, hosting them in its corporate suite to see Sacramento Kings games, World Extreme Cagefighting matches, and Britney Spears and Lil Wayne concerts. Getting the tickets is as easy as calling the BP ticket request line, an exclusive, unpublished phone number that appears to exist for the sole purpose of granting freebies to lawmakers, regulators, and their staffs.

"You make a request, leave it on the voicemail, and at some date the tickets either magically appear or they don't," says a legislative consultant who gave me the ticket line's number and spoke on condition of anonymity. "They don't talk to you; you just see 'em or you don't." The ticket line's message was taken down sometime in the past week, shortly after I began my reporting. You can still listen to the original recording below.

-snip-

"There is only one reason why BP is giving legislative officials or administrative officials free tickets, and that is trying to create goodwill," explains Bob Stern, the president of the Center for Governmental Studies, a political watchdog group in Los Angeles. "They are not giving them to the average Joe. It's an absolute business decision." In 2004, BP spokesman Dan Cummings told the Los Angeles Times that its Arco Arena suite seats 18, and that one-half to one-third of those seats are usually taken by company employees or guests. The rest are made available to state employees. "It's for them to come out and for them to enjoy themselves," he said. "We don't tend to talk business with them." BP did not respond to a request for comment.

-long interesting snip-
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they list the phone number but say it doesn't work anymore

[rocktivity]

1. "Goodwill?" I can remember when it was called

"bribery!"


rocktivity

[saigon68]

2. Bribery

[louis-t]

4. Quid Pro Quo.

[dtexdem]

3. The phone number should be 272-7423.

I.e., BPBRIBE.

[ensho]

5. kick

nt