[StBernard] 'Spillionaires': Profiteering and Mismanagement in the Wake of the BP Oil Spill

[Westley Annis]

Editor's notes: Links to documentation that was used to support the story
are on the web site listed below.

-------------------------

‘Spillionaires’: Profiteering and Mismanagement in the Wake of the BP Oil
Spill

by Kim Barker 
ProPublica, April 13, 2011, 1:05 p.m.
A version of this story was co-published with The Washington Post.
http://is.gd/fE5N4y

The oil spill that was once expected to bring economic ruin to the Gulf
Coast appears to have delivered something entirely different: a gusher of
money.

Some people profiteered from the spill by charging BP outrageous rates for
cleanup. Others profited from BP claims money, handed out in arbitrary ways.
So many people cashed in that they earned nicknames -- "spillionaires" or
"BP rich." Meanwhile, others hurt by the spill ended up getting
comparatively little.

In the end, BP's attempt to make things right -- spending more than $16
billion so far, mostly on claims of damage and cleanup -- created new
divisions and even new wrongs. Because the federal government ceded control
over spill cleanup spending to BP, it's impossible to know for certain what
that money accomplished, or what exactly was done.

Some inequities arose from the chaos that followed the April 20 spill. But
in at least one corner of Louisiana, the dramatic differences can be traced
in part to local powerbrokers. To show how the money flowed, ProPublica
interviewed people who worked on the spill and examined records, including
some reported earlier by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, for St. Bernard
Parish, a coastal community about five miles southeast of downtown New
Orleans.

Documents show that local companies with ties to insiders garnered lucrative
cleanup contracts and then charged BP for every imaginable expense. The
prime cleanup company, which had a history of bad debts and no oil-spill
experience, submitted bills with little documentation or none at all. A
subcontractor charged BP $15,400 per month to rent a generator that usually
cost $1,500 a month. A company owned in part by the St. Bernard Parish
sheriff charged more than $1 million a month for land it had been renting
for less than $1,700 a month.

Assignments for individual fishermen followed the same pattern, with
insiders and supporters earning big checks.

"This parish raped BP," said Wayne Landry, the chairman of the St. Bernard
Parish Council, referring to the conduct of its political leadership. "At
the end of the day, it really just frustrates me. I'm an elected official. I
have guilt by association."

The economic benefits that rippled through St. Bernard Parish were seen in
varying degrees throughout the Gulf. In the six months after the spill,
sales tax receipts, a key measure of economic activity, rose significantly
in eight of the 24 most affected communities from Louisiana to Florida,
despite the national recession. Only one community, in Mississippi, saw its
receipts dip significantly. Local governments also profited. A recent story
by the Associated Press found that governments along the coast used BP money
to buy SUVs, Tasers and other equipment not necessary to clean up oil.

According to sales tax collections, Louisiana made out better than anywhere.
Sales tax collections from Plaquemines Parish rose more than 71 percent,
while St. Bernard saw the biggest jump of all. The parish collected almost
$26.8 million in sales and lodging tax receipts in the six months after the
spill, almost twice as much as over the same period in 2009. Flush with cash
from cleanup and claims, many fishermen bought new toys, boats and trucks.
Sales at the nearest Chevrolet dealer rose 41 percent.

Some of the influx of money can be traced to the efforts of St. Bernard's
parish president, Craig Taffaro Jr., a 45-year-old psychotherapist with a
wrestler's build, a cue-ball head and a trimmed goatee.

Just days into the crisis, Taffaro did what many parish presidents did: He
invoked a Louisiana law that allowed him to declare a 30-day emergency and
handle the crisis without most normal government checks and balances. But
Taffaro used his powers more broadly than most, saying that he wanted to put
money back into the community. Unlike the leaders of other Gulf communities,
Taffaro -- not BP -- chose the prime contractor that supervised the cleanup.
He and his allies also decided which fishermen would be hired to put out
boom and search for oil. At one point, Taffaro hired his future son-in-law
to work in the finance department and help on the spill.

In some ways, parish residents seemed to view the disaster and BP's
culpability as a way to recover from earlier blows. More than other coastal
communities, St. Bernard bore the brunt of Hurricane Katrina, which flooded
almost every home in August 2005. The population dropped almost in half,
from about 67,000 in 2000 to about 36,000 in 2010, largely because people
didn't come back after Katrina and the hurricanes that followed. Before the
spill, the parish slashed its budget by 11 percent, cutting garbage
collection, the fire department and mosquito control. There was just no
money.

The spill changed that. Fishermen were paid to lay out protective boom, the
floating material used to corral the oil. Contractors were hired to manage
the cleanup and provide security. Claims money began flowing to people who
said their lives had been upended by the crisis.

The parish government was among the first to benefit, snagging a $1 million
check for oil-spill expenses. Parish employees went shopping for cameras,
printers, a file cabinet, staplers, six pairs of children's scissors and 712
shirts emblazoned with the parish name. Some of the money also went to
overtime pay for more than 40 parish employees, including three who claimed
overtime for picking up dog food for the animal shelter. St. Bernard's
homeland security director, David Dysart, a salaried employee and Taffaro's
good friend, was paid almost $23,000 for working 497 hours of overtime in
less than seven weeks. That meant he was working an average of more than 16
hours a day, including weekends.

As the money flowed, complaints spread. Some beneficiaries didn't
necessarily suffer from the spill but had social or political connections.
Subcontractors said those at the top of the cleanup creamed off money for
doing very little, while those at the bottom earned much less for doing the
actual work.

At first, everyone was angry with BP. But as the months wore on, some St.
Bernard residents directed their frustration at Taffaro, blaming him for
handing out jobs and money to a small group of insiders.

Meanwhile, Taffaro was attacking BP and the federal government in the media,
appearing on TV alongside Gov. Bobby Jindal and testifying in Congress. His
outrage was palpable. There wasn't enough boom, coordination or respect for
the local government. BP wasn't making good on its obligations.

The pressure paid off. Taffaro at one point boasted that St. Bernard had
doled out more BP cleanup money to commercial fishermen than any other
Louisiana parish. His claim is impossible to verify, because neither Taffaro
nor anyone else would provide details about the spending numbers.

BP gave only limited information to ProPublica, and declined to comment on
allegations it had been overcharged. The U.S. Coast Guard, the federal
agency most involved with overseeing BP's response, said the government and
BP decided cleanup priorities together.

Taffaro and other St. Bernard officials refused to respond to the
public-records requests ProPublica began filing in November. When asked
again last week why the parish hadn't provided any records, Dysart said he
would be happy to help but that filling the request would take time and cost
a lot of money.

"I'm in the process of really, truly trying to assist you," said Dysart, who
is also the parish interim chief administrative officer.

In response to questions submitted by ProPublica last month, Taffaro said
through his spokeswoman that he can approve overtime for salaried employees
in extenuating circumstances and that Dysart eventually decided to stop
taking overtime. Taffaro said there was no law against hiring his future
son-in-law because he was not yet married, and that paying overtime for
picking up dog food was necessary because the spill had caused fishermen to
abandon their dogs.

Taffaro also said that the tax receipt bubble was "a false economy," similar
to what happened after Hurricane Katrina.

****

Many companies and people earning big money from the spill had connections
to parish powerbrokers, according to court documents, parish records and
interviews done by ProPublica.

Amigo Enterprises Inc., which for years leased land to one of the busiest
marinas in the parish, got in early. BP based the cleanup operation at the
marina in Hopedale, which made sense. But the price Amigo charged BP for the
land was astronomical. Amigo had been leasing the land for less than $1,700
a month from the Arlene & Joseph Meraux Charitable Foundation Inc.,
according to the nonprofit's most recent tax returns. The company billed BP
more than $1.1 million a month, said BP spokesman Joe Ellis.

Amigo wasn't just any company. One of the owners was St. Bernard's powerful
sheriff of 26 years, Jack Stephens, who also sat on the board of the Meraux
Foundation. According to the most recent ethics form Stephens filed with the
state, he earned more than $100,000 from Amigo in 2009.

Stephens' cousin Anthony Fernandez Jr., also Stephens' former chief deputy
and one of his two partners in Amigo, said BP paid less than $1 million a
month to Amigo for rent, but refused to say how much.

Fernandez also got a chunk of BP money for another company, Parish Oilfield
Services LLC. That company hired off-duty sheriff's deputies to provide
security for the spill, charging BP $45 an hour per deputy, Ellis said. The
normal off-duty rate for the deputies is $30 an hour, according to the
sheriff's office.


Website for Loupe Construction and Consulting Co. The word 'Constructon' is
missing an 'i.' - Graphic on web site
http://www.propublica.org/images/delacroix/loupe_website_300x200_110412.jpg


The company that benefited most from BP's checkbook was Loupe Construction
and Consulting Co., Inc., a small, family-owned business in a nearby parish
with few employees and a bare-bones website that misspelled the company
name. On May 5, Taffaro chose Loupe to manage the cleanup in St. Bernard, a
job that would eventually be worth as much as $125 million.

Taffaro said he selected Loupe after asking for proposals from several
companies and because of its disaster experience. He also said he thought
the company had experience responding to oil spills. The decision didn't sit
well with some people.

"That company had no particular expertise in oil mitigation -- none," said
Landry, the parish council chair. "But we've been kept in the dark on the
entire operation. Pardon the pun, but we've been left out of the loop."

In other Louisiana parishes, BP chose the lead cleanup companies, all of
them certified by the Coast Guard as official Oil Spill Response
Organizations, meaning they had some experience responding to spills. But
Loupe didn't have that certification. In fact, the company that would
eventually manage more than 50 subcontractors and 150 vessels had no
oil-spill experience at all. Its main job in St. Bernard had been helping
rebuild levees.

Coast Guard Commander Dan Lauer said he wasn't familiar with what happened
in St. Bernard Parish, but said he would "absolutely" want a certified
company as prime contractor in a major oil spill.

At least two Oil Spill Response Organizations were eventually brought in to
oversee some parish cleanup, but BP signed a master service contract with
Loupe on June 17, after the parish had insisted for weeks that the company
become the main contractor.

"I guess they figured they were stuck with us," said Randy Nunez, a lawyer
for Loupe, adding that the company had taken "a leap of faith" by starting
work without official BP approval.

Owner Paul Loupe had a long history of debts and lawsuits. Four lawsuits,
three of which have been settled, accused him of not paying his bills after
Katrina and Hurricane Rita, when he and another small Louisiana company
joined up to clear debris in nearby Jefferson Parish, the company's only
major experience responding to a disaster. Loupe's website says the two
companies performed more than $100 million worth of work for Ceres
Environmental Services Inc., the Minnesota-based company that hired them.

But much of that work was actually performed by layers of subcontractors,
which is why Loupe was accused of being one of the "pass-through" companies
that proliferated after the hurricanes. Workers at the bottom of the
contracting chain earned so little for debris-removal work that the U.S.
Department of Labor later ordered Ceres to pay $1.5 million in back wages to
more than 2,000 laborers.

Paul Loupe referred questions to his lawyers. One, Karl Dix, said everyone
was happy with Paul Loupe's work. "He worked tirelessly during that effort
and really accomplished a lot," Dix said.

After Loupe was picked, there was a feeding frenzy to get hired by the
company, which operated out of a family compound about an hour from St.
Bernard. People with little connection to commercial fishing used old boats
or bought new ones and signed up to work. Companies from Washington state,
Nevada and Mississippi came to town. Contracts were fought over. Everyone
wanted a piece, just as they did after Hurricane Katrina. Only this time,
the federal government wasn't footing the bill; a reviled corporation was,
and the prices reflected that.

"There was a lot of gouging," said David Northcutt, who worked for a Loupe
subcontractor and has since sued for unpaid wages. "Everybody had their hand
out, of course. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a lot of
people."

F.J. Campo, who ran the boat launch at Shell Beach that provided fuel for BP
boats, said one man who had been trying to sell his fiberglass yacht in
Florida brought it back to the parish, got it hired by Loupe, parked it
behind the docks and came into the launch every nine or 10 days to bill BP
for fuel for the generator.

"They used to hide it behind the docks over there, and it never worked,"
Campo said.

Small companies tried to find a way in the door, to tap the right connection
to get hired.

In July, Loupe hired a Washington state company, Farrow Construction
Specialties Inc., to set up marsh-washing systems on barges. Almost
immediately, a Farrow consultant named Larry Howell, who had once pleaded
guilty to a federal bank fraud charge, set up his own company with people
from South Carolina, Texas and Arizona to take over the Farrow contract.

Tim Henson, who had years of experience cleaning up oil spills and worked
with a company that partnered with Farrow, said Loupe positioned 13 or 14
skimmer boats around each marsh-washing barge, even though the barges
themselves functioned as oil skimmers.

"BP was being billed for all the man hours of all those boats," said Robert
Brown, an engineer who helped out on the project. "One would disappear to go
take a break or take lunch. Then another one would fill in and do nothing.
It was the Keystone Kops."


In setting up his new company, Howell turned to family as well. One
subcontractor he hired was a small Mississippi company run by his mother's
brother-in-law. It charged Howell $15,400 per month to rent each of three
generators, which usually each went for $1,500 a month. It charged more than
$18 a foot for wire that other contractors said cost at most $4 a foot, and
charged $3 a mile for 2,240 miles of travel when the IRS standard business
rate was 50 cents. The company also billed Howell more than $14,000 for 140
hours of labor to set up a single generator, a job that other contractors
say should take only a few hours. Howell passed all those charges up to
Loupe and BP.

During a squabble over the Loupe subcontract, Mike Turner, who had initially
partnered with Howell and Farrow, said rumors began spreading that the FBI
was investigating him. He hired a lawyer and called the FBI. He said he was
told he was not being investigated, but he spent hours talking to a New
Orleans-based FBI agent about allegations of payoffs and overbilling.

"I spilled my guts. So now, it's my understanding they are being
investigated," said Turner, referring to the parish and the businesses that
were hired for the cleanup.

The FBI agent declined to answer questions for this story. Howell couldn't
be found for comment. The company he helped form moved out of its office in
December without giving notice.

As the cleanup dragged on, Loupe faced a cash-flow problem. For help, Loupe
turned to Park Investments Ltd., a local company that primarily develops
shopping malls and other commercial properties. Park Investments and its
related companies had done business with plenty of parish powerbrokers in
the past -- Stephens, the sheriff, had been a partner in at least one
development.

Although a search of court documents showed that Park Investments rarely
made and recorded such loans, the company agreed to loan Loupe an
unspecified amount of money. As collateral, Loupe put up all the BP payments
due from its clean-up contract.

Park Investments and companies run by its president, Lewis Frank, and owner,
Joseph Georgusis, are major political donors in Louisiana. And one of the
politicians they frequently donate to is Taffaro, the parish president.

At a 2009 fundraiser for Taffaro, Park Investments gave $2,500, the legal
limit in Louisiana. Three other businesses formed by Frank and Georgusis or
their businesses -- they've been involved in at least 15 over more than 20
years -- contributed $2,500 each. Georgusis contributed $2,500. So did
Georgusis' wife, Cheryl.

In essence, the cleanup company chosen by Taffaro was now being financed by
some of Taffaro's biggest supporters.

Taffaro said he had no interest in the business practices of Loupe or Park
Investments. Frank said Park Investments loaned Loupe money because of
"business." He dismissed any connection between the loan and earlier
donations to Taffaro as "coincidental at best."

"If you're trying to link something, the link doesn't exist," Frank said.

****

St. Bernard was certainly not the only community where markups flourished.

In another Louisiana parish, a BP supplier hired more than 20 vessels a day,
paying at most $2,500 a day for each vessel but charging BP $15,000 a day.
The supplier pocketed at least $250,000 every day for months, according to
someone who saw the bills.

Bills from another Gulf state showed that BP paid a subcontractor $36 an
hour for workers to clean up oil along sandy beaches, according to the same
person. The subcontractor hired a temp agency, which provided workers for
about $14 an hour, leaving the subcontractor with the $22-an-hour
difference. The temp agency then made its own profit, hiring workers for
about $10 an hour.

By late August, the BP spill had shifted from an emergency response to a
long-term recovery, and BP started pushing back on some bills it was
receiving, including in St. Bernard, where far less oil had arrived than
originally predicted.

On Aug. 21, Loupe delivered 139 invoices to Louisiana's main incident
command post in Houma -- the first time the finance team said it had seen
any of the invoices. All told, Loupe claimed BP owed it $34.7 million.

Over the following week, BP's finance team reviewed the 55 largest invoices.
Team members found that all the invoices lacked information showing that BP
had authorized the goods or services. All also lacked supporting
documentation like timesheets. One in five had basic errors and omissions,
such as differing daily rates for the same vessels, double-billing for the
same equipment, and math errors.

Meanwhile, Loupe officials were demanding payment, and Taffaro was calling
BP over the impasse. Despite the fact that the well was plugged, Taffaro
declared another 30-day emergency -- his last -- meaning that for another
month, he still controlled the cleanup.

On Saturday, Aug. 28, Paul Loupe, Taffaro and Dysart met with BP officials
in New Orleans. Loupe, unable to pay his subcontractors, asked BP to pay him
something within two days. BP officials refused. Loupe and BP then agreed to
review the invoices together.

The meeting, agreement and invoice problems were outlined in a letter sent
by the chief operating officer of BP's Gulf Coast Restoration Organization
to Paul Loupe. The letter, obtained by ProPublica, was also sent to Taffaro.

"As we discussed at the meeting, all of the invoices reviewed to date lack
certain critical information that, in accordance with well accepted business
practices and BP's code of conduct, BP requires before it can approve an
invoice for payment," the letter said.

BP also began balking at other bills. Parish Oilfield claimed to be owed
$900,000 for sheriffs' deputies, BP's Ellis said. At $45 an hour, that meant
the deputies had clocked as many as 20,000 hours since the spill.

If Parish Oilfield pocketed $15 for every hour worked -- given that the
normal off-duty deputy rate was $30 an hour -- that would have meant
$300,000 for the company itself.

In addition, Amigo Enterprises, run by the sheriff, his cousin and a third
partner, claimed to be owed millions for equipment, rent and fuel at the
Hopedale base.

Within days, the spill cleanup ground to a halt. Amigo refused to provide
fuel for the cleanup. So did Campo at Shell Beach and another fuel dock on
Delacroix Island, because Loupe hadn't paid past bills.

On Aug. 31, the sheriff's office signed an eviction notice for BP at the
Hopedale site because BP had not paid rent to Amigo. "Landlord wants
possession of his property," the notice said, without clarifying that the
sheriff's company was the landlord. That night, Taffaro held a press
conference, highlighting the eviction notice and accusing BP of not paying
its bills, including more than $3 million owed to Amigo and more than $34
million owed to Loupe.

"We are calling on BP to step forward to make this right," Taffaro said.

BP paid Amigo. The cleanup resumed.

****

While contractors fought for BP's cleanup money, commercial fishermen
jockeyed for BP-financed jobs to replace their lost income.

As long as oil poured into the Gulf, the fishermen were unable to work and
unqualified for most other jobs. Some went on anti-depressants. Others
started drinking too much. Nearly all tried to join BP's "Vessels of
Opportunity" program, which was supposed to provide a lifeline for
commercial fishermen by hiring them and their boats for cleanup work. Boats
could make $1,200 to $3,000 a day. Crew members often earned $200 a day,
while captains earned as much as $360 a day.

The program was so lucrative, if disorganized, that people throughout the
Gulf, including some nonfishermen, started fighting over the slots for
boats. As complaints grew, Landry, the St. Bernard council chairman, and
another council member pulled together a committee of fishermen and seafood
dealers to create a list of bona fide fishermen. Then they drew names to set
up assignments.

"That list was posted," Landry said. "And the next day everything changed.
Craig Taffaro took over."

Using his emergency powers, Taffaro set up St. Bernard's version of Vessels
of Opportunity. Now Taffaro, not BP, controlled who got the coveted jobs.

David Dysart, the homeland security director, said the jobs were handed out
fairly through a public lottery. But a ProPublica reporter attended a
meeting where Taffaro gave a job to a seafood dealer without a drawing. And
dealers complained repeatedly that they weren't listened to when it came to
hiring the parish's top fishermen. State officials also said the parish
didn't follow up on an early request for a list of top fishermen.

Soon after the cleanup began, commercial fishermen also started complaining
that a small group of favorites got more work than anyone else. ProPublica's
analysis of parish checks paid to fishermen over the first six weeks, filed
as part of a court case, seems to bear that out. A small group worked
regularly, earning $24,000 to $34,000. Although Taffaro and Dysart said
those fishermen performed additional jobs, the same fishermen got and kept
those additional jobs throughout the entire cleanup. Meanwhile, Eric
Melerine, a top fisherman from Delacroix Island, earned only $5,260 during
those first six weeks. His younger brother Jason, also a full-time
commercial fisherman, earned just $4,560. Another fisherman, Donald Campo,
failed to get hired on the BP cleanup at all, despite signing up.

"Sometimes with things like that, it's all about who you know," Campo said.
"It's about connections."

Knowing Taffaro was key to getting hired, fishermen said. Kim Alfonso said
he was initially told he couldn't get his crab boat on the job. He
protested.

"I said, 'Craig Taffaro said I can get it on,'" he recalled. "They said,
'Alright, come on in.' That's the way they did business. If you went in
there and said, 'Craig Taffaro said this,' you was on."

Cisco Gonzales, who owns an air-conditioning company and runs the Louisiana
Crawfish Festival, got his boat on the cleanup by lending it to his nephew,
a fisherman whose own boat broke down. Many fishermen complained about
Gonzales earning money from the spill, especially fishermen who couldn't get
a boat hired. Gonzales said he felt bad about all the animosity against
Taffaro.

"Me and him's good friends, to tell you the truth," Gonzales said. "With
Craig, he's done a more than fair job in our community."

On June 1, fishermen showed up at a council meeting to complain about the
selection system. They complained that some fishermen worked seven days a
week, while others hadn't worked in 30 days. Stacy Campo, a fisherman's
wife, said the inequities were ripping apart the community.

"You are the one we look to for the answers," she told Taffaro. "You are
breaking up families and friends because you can't get an answer. Why is it
that we have some big boats on the job that's been on the job since this
started? My husband's been on rotation once. Why is that? We want the
answers. This is going to kill a community that has been together for
hundreds of years."

Taffaro promised to fix the job list and make sure assignments were fair. He
also emphasized that St. Bernard was handing out more money to the fishing
industry than any other Louisiana parish. In the next two weeks, he said,
parish fishermen would earn $4.5 million working for BP. By early September,
that would reach $7 million.

"That's the result of the pressure that we're putting on them," Taffaro told
the audience. "Believe me, BP would rather do none of this."

One fisherman complained that BP was putting absurd amounts of money into
the parish and said he wanted his own piece of the action.

"This is ungodly amounts of money," Taffaro agreed. "Many people are making
more money than they've ever made in their entire lives. I don't have a
problem with that, and I agree with you: that I want everybody to share the
wealth in this situation."

At the end of the meeting, Landry asked Taffaro for an accounting of how the
parish had spent the BP money.

"Not a problem," Taffaro replied.

But Taffaro and the parish turned over only some of the records, despite
four public-records requests by Landry and the council clerk. Landry had to
get a court order to obtain more. The council shared some records with
ProPublica; others were in the court file.

The system featured bizarre incentives and rules. It didn't differentiate
between those who got cleanup jobs with BP and those who didn't. The amount
people received for their initial six-month emergency claims was based on
whatever paperwork they decided to submit, not on their actual losses. The
final claims formula seemed to reward fishermen who stayed home after the
government fishing bans were lifted and punished fishermen who returned to
work.

One man who earned $67,000 in 2009 fishing crabs and hunting a swamp rat
called nutria got $100,000 for his six-month emergency claim. That was on
top of $90,000 he earned working on the cleanup and $20,000 he received in
initial BP claims. In the eight months after the spill, he earned a total of
$210,000, more than three times as much as he earned in all of 2009.

The distributions seemed crazily disproportionate.

Thomas Gonzales, who said he filed $90,000 in taxable income in 2009,
received only $22,000 in his six-month payment. "They're giving the money to
the young generation," said Gonzales, who is 73. "They figure I got one foot
over the hole, the other one on the edge."

Jason Melerine, 28, who said his income was about $90,000 in 2009, received
a six-month emergency compensation check for $180,000. To support his claim,
he submitted invoices showing that his boat sold $280,000 worth of seafood
the year before, an amount that didn't reflect his expenses.

His brother Eric Melerine, who earned $111,000 in 2009, received just
$60,000. To support his claim he used his 2009 tax return, which did reflect
his expenses.

Eric Melerine's deckhand Mikey Labat, who made about $70,000 in 2009,
initially received $6,900 for his six-month claim. His wife, Laura, was so
upset that she filed an appeal and got the family another $18,000. Later,
after hearing rumors of waitresses and hairdressers earning big money, she
said she went to the claims office and sarcastically asked if she could file
her own claim because her husband wasn't paying her an allowance for cooking
and cleaning.

"They said, 'Go ahead, file a claim,'" Laura Labat said, adding that she
didn't.

Many fishermen fretted that businesses that were suffering from the
recession, not the spill, were getting BP money. A hairdresser at Dorene's
hair salon received $8,000 for her emergency claim. Waitresses at the World
of Wings Café and Wingery received between $5,000 and $7,000; the
restaurant's owner got $50,000. A valet car parker at a five-star hotel in
New Orleans that was 98 percent full received $1,000.

Felesia Carter, a manager at St. Bernard's only off-track betting parlor,
said she heard customers talking about how they were gambling away claims
money. Her business was so good, she said, that employees worked overtime
and weren't allowed to file for claims.

"I don't understand how BP is just giving its money out like this," Carter
said. "Give it to the people who deserve it."

****

In September, Randy Nunez, one of Loupe's lawyers, invited people to an
event hall in New Orleans' historic warehouse district to raise money for
Craig Taffaro's re-election campaign, two invitees said. Nunez did not
return later calls from ProPublica.

The stakes are high for the October election, because the parish council
recently bumped the next president's salary from $70,000 to $128,000, a
hefty sum in a community with a median household income of about $38,500 a
year, about $13,500 below the national median.

More than 200 people showed up for the fundraiser at The Chicory, including
Paul Loupe and his wife, witnesses said. Records filed by Taffaro's campaign
committee show that he pulled in $207,400 -- more than his combined
donations from the previous two years. No other president or presidential
candidate in St. Bernard has ever reported raising that much money in a
single night, according to Louisiana records available online.

At least $45,800 of that money came from people and companies that
ProPublica has linked to the cleanup effort, including Loupe, Nunez's law
firm, Park Investments and people and businesses connected to Park. The
amount is likely higher than that, but no list of companies that worked on
the spill is available for comparison with Taffaro's campaign filings.

Through his spokeswoman, Taffaro said all of the contributions were legal.

Loupe is now enmeshed in a battle with BP over what it says it is owed. As
of November, the last time the company's lawyers spoke to ProPublica, Loupe
had been paid $25 million, but it claimed to be owed $100 million more. Some
contractors in other parishes claim that BP owes them millions, too.

Is BP shortchanging contractors? Are contractors trying to scam BP? Because
none of the records are public, it's impossible to know for sure.

The last interview ProPublica had with Taffaro was in November. He
complained that the BP emergency claims were not distributed fairly and said
BP and the federal government should have listened more to local
authorities.

When pressed about how he selected Loupe and picked the boats for cleanup,
Taffaro abruptly ended the interview.

"We're done," he said, escorting the reporter to the door. "I will not allow
you to do this to St. Bernard Parish."

ProPublica's research director, Lisa Schwartz, and researchers Kitty
Bennett, Sasha Chavkin and Liz Day contributed to this report.