BP and the oil giant’s former chief executive Lord Browne have been named in an American lawsuit alleging bribery of government officials in Grenada.

The legal action, filed in New York, claims that bribes have been offered in an attempt to win valuable oil and gas licences off the Caribbean island.

Other defendants named in the claim include the Russian energy group TNK-BP, in which BP has a 50% stake, and Russian “oiligarch” Mikhail Fridman.

The case has been brought by Texan oil company RSM Production Corporation and its president Jack Grynberg.

According to papers filed with the US district court for the southern district of New York, Grynberg and RSM signed an oil and gas exploration agreement with the government of Grenada in 1996.

In September of that year, Grenada’s minister for energy and deputy prime minister, Gregory Bowen – also named as a defendant – told Grynberg that he expected bribes in order to allow RSM to do business on the island, the claim says.

Grynberg refused, but in 1999 passed on certain information about proposed drilling sites to BP in the hope of forming a partnership with the British oil company, say the court documents.

BP turned Grynberg down. But the lawsuit alleges that information about Grenada may have been passed to TNK.

BP joined forces with TNK and another Russian energy group Sidanco to form TNK-BP in 2003 The Grynberg claim alleges a company and one of its directors “serve as fronts for . . . efforts to bribe Grenadian officials, and thereby acquire rights to explore, develop and produce the Grenadian offshore areas believed to contain very promising, vast recoverable reserves of petroleum hydrocarbons”.

According to the claim, the attempted bribes were to persuade Grenada to break its 1996 deal with RSM and grant rights to TNK-BP instead.

The case has also reached a court in Britain. The World Bank International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) sitting in London is hearing a related claim, made by Grynberg’s RSM against the government of Grenada. The court says the case is “pending”.

Grynberg has clashed with BP before. He was involved in the discovery of the Kashagan oil-field in Kazakhstan in the 1990s.

He later sued BP for allegedly trying to exclude him from what he claimed to be his rightful stake in the field and brought a racketeering charge against Browne. The case was settled.

BP would not comment on the Grenadian case as it involves TNK-BP. TNK could not be contacted.

Last week police in Moscow raided the head office of TNK-BP as part of what they said was a criminal inquiry into Sidanco, which was rolled into TNK-BP five years ago.

There are fears that the action could be part of a Kremlin campaign to increase pressure on foreign investors. There has been persistent speculation that Russia’s state-owned Gazprom wants to take control of TNK-BP.

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