A consortium of funds...have filed common fraud, statutory fraud and negligent misrepresentation law suits in the state of Texas. The investors claim that they would never have paid top dollar for the firm’s shares had they ‘known the truth’. The investors believe that BP and its then CEO Tony Hayward were involved in a cover-up, both in the years prior to the spill and following the disaster itself. They allege that BP’s ‘safety first’ policy was never as robust as the oil giant claimed, and that efforts were made to conceal the size of the oil spill, and downplay ‘the degree of BP’s likely responsibility for the catastrophe’.