Oil giant Texaco has taken a fresh step to kill off the race scandal which cost one Bermuda executive his job two years ago.

Because the firm has appointed a top lawyer to chair their specialist racism-busting unit.

Washington DC attorney Thomas S. Williamson Jr. now moves to the top of the company's Equality and Fairness Task Force.

It was set up for $35 million, as part of a huge legal settlement with the firm's past and present black employees in November 1996.

Bermuda-based J. David Keough was one of several company executives sacked amid race scandal investigations two months later.

He had been Chief Financial and Administrative Officer of Heddington, Texaco's Hamilton-based captive insurance operation.

But he is still in legal wranglings with Texaco -- denying any involvement in racial slurs or a plot to destroy evidence as part of the scandal lawsuit.

Mr. Keough was wound up in the controversy when it emerged he was at a secretly-taped meeting in which three executives referred to black Texaco employees as "jelly beans'' and "niggers''.

The firm faced a massive lawsuit in a "class-action'', or representative sample of workers, co-ordinated by 1,500 black employees.

The staff claimed they were denied promotions because they were black.

Mr. Keough was suspended and later fired, even though he was not heard uttering slurs on the tape.

He has now filed his own legal action against Texaco, claiming libel, wrongful termination and "international infliction of emotional distress''.

The task force monitors discrimination and the recruitment of black workers and develops diversity and sensitivity training.

New chairman Mr. Williamson, a partner with the US capital's Covington and Burling law firm, joined the task force when it formed in June 1997.

Janet Stoner, Texaco's vice-president of human resources, said: "Tom Williamson has served with distinction as a member of the task force since its creation.

"We look forward to his leadership as we move forward with our shared goal of ensuring world-class human resource programmes and policies at Texaco.'' Under the terms of the legal settlement, the task force's chairman is chosen both by Texaco and lawyers representing the workers who took out the lawsuit.

BUSINESS BUC