When the companies picked up crude oil from wells to take it to market, they falsified receipts to make it look like had picked up less oil than they really did, or that the oil was of a lower quality than it really was. The investigation had been launched in October of 1987 by the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs after a series of articles in the Arizona Republic alleged that big oil companies were stealing oil from Native Americans who owned oil wells. The only reason that Cordes changed the policy was because an employee in Texas complained to Cordes that he had been told to destroy all written evaluations he had made of Koch Industries’ truck drivers and oil gaugers. It is unknown how many documents were destroyed because of that memo.ĭon Cordes, Koch Industries’ general counsel, eventually reversed course and told company employees to retain evidence that might pertain to oil theft, but he didn’t do so until November of 1988, months after Hanna’s memo went out. Under such circumstances, corporate lawyers and executives often order their employees to take special care to retain records that might be relevant to a lawsuit or investigation. The allegations would be confirmed or disproven in part by the very documents Hanna was allowing to be destroyed. At the time, Koch Industries was the biggest purchaser of crude oil in the country, and Senate investigators believed that the company was stealing from its producers by misreporting how much oil it picked up from their wells. Senate had just launched an investigation into Koch Industries for stealing oil from leases on Indian reservations. Coming when it did, it could also be seen as a license to destroy evidence. Then, he ordered that “written materials which would be useful to our competitors should be destroyed by shredding, burning, or some equally effective method.”Īt any other time, Hanna’s memo might have been standard advice for a secrecy-minded company.

He reminded employees at the oil company that there was a code of secrecy for internal records.

On July 11, 1988, the president of Koch Industries, Bill Hanna, sent a companywide memo informing employees how to handle company records.

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