General counsel should expect to be in the spotlight and take the lead in the event of a regulatory investigation, Royal Dutch Shell general counsel Beat Hess told in-house lawyers in Amsterdam.

Mr Hess said his decision to convince the board to extend full co-operation to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation in the US into the company's overstating of its oil reserves had been 'very important.'


Last summer Shell was fined $120 million (£66 million) by the SEC and £17 million by the Financial Services Authority in the UK for misleading investors. Damning evidence included a memo by oil and gas chief Walter van de Vijver saying that he was 'sick and tired of lying' about the reserve levels.


Mr Hess said: 'Negotiating with the SEC was extremely difficult. We had problems with in-house correspondence, with some very damaging e-mails. It was my first task to convince the management that we had to extend full co-operation with the investigation.


'It is not that people were reluctant, but it is a legitimate question when you have an investigation - how do we go about it? The statement of immediate full co-operation was a very important one for me as a general counsel to make.'


He said that the SEC would normally expect full co-operation to mean a waiver of attorney-client privilege. He added: 'As an in-house lawyer, you are in the spotlight [during an investigation] and have a crucial role to play... General counsel have a lot of exposure now. When I joined Shell, I thought that I would have a few quiet years [before retirement].'