Sans review, Feinberg cut massive check for undisclosed ‘BP business partner’

Well, here's yet more material for the growing chorus of critics who maintain that the Ken Feinberg-run Gulf Coast Claims Facility isn't the impartial entity it's purported to be: According to an AP report, the oil spill relief fund has paid out only one final settlement in a sum higher than its thousands of controversial one-time "quick payment" settlement checks. Those payouts are $5,000 for individuals and $25,000 for businesses, with recipients required to waive all rights to sue BP in the future; in contrast to such stringent provisions, the one outlier payment -- totaling a cool $10 million -- seems a bit, well, shady.

For starters, the terms of the settlement are shrouded in secrecy, with Feinberg -- who's repeatedly insisted that he operates independently from BP even as the oil giant finances the $20 billion fund -- cutting a $10 million check to an unnamed "BP business partner." That payment came at the behest of the oil giant, something that a BP spokeswoman Hejdi Feick termed "a unique situation."

"We never reviewed the claim. We honored the request of the parties to fund the claim," Feinberg told the AP's Brian Skoloff. "It was a private settlement, and we paid it, but we were not privy to the settlement negotiations between BP and that party."

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, the jurist overseeing the thousands of spill-related lawsuits, is expected to issue a ruling on the relationship between Feinberg and BP later this week. At a hearing before Barbier last week, BP attorney Don Haycraft insisted that the GCCF will "expand and improve" to better serve the thousands of claimants who complain that they aren't being treated fairly by the office.

Still, on the day that the fund began processing claims from spill victims, Feinberg proclaimed, "I am beholden to neither the administration nor BP. I am entirely independent." In the wake of today's revelation, countless struggling Gulf Coast residents whose lives have been turned upside down by the BP oil disaster are once again begging to differ.

(Photo: AP/The Sun Herald/Amanda McCoy)