LONDON The BBC, Britain's public service broadcaster, acknowledged Friday that it had been tricked into airing an interview with a man who falsely claimed to be a spokesman for Dow Chemical and who said the company took the blame for the Bhopal disaster. The hoax, contradicting Dow Chemical's rejection of any responsibility for the catastrophe, came on the 20th anniversary of the day in 1984 when waves of lethal gas escaped from a chemical plant in Bhopal, central India, killing more than 3,500 people. At the time the plant was owned by Union Carbide, which was taken over by Dow Chemical three years ago. The interview was broadcast less than one year after an official inquiry criticized the BBC for inaccurate reporting and "defective" supervision after it asserted that Prime Minister Tony Blair and his aides exaggerated the case for war in Iraq. Two of its most senior managers quit as a result. The organization is also midway through a government review of its operations, carried out once every 10 years in preparation for the renewal of the royal charter under which it operates as an independent broadcaster. It is financed by compulsory license fees levied on the owners of television sets. The hoax interview was broadcast twice Friday morning on BBC World, a 24-hour TV news channel. A man, identifying himself as Jude Finisterra, said Dow Chemical had agreed to set up a $12 billion compensation fund, apparently reversing its insistence that any liabilities had been settled by Union Carbide before Dow took over the firm. Later, the BBC said that in a statement that the interview was "part of an elaborate deception," adding that "the person did not represent the company and we want to make it clear that the information he gave was entirely inaccurate." Dow Chemical said Finisterra was not a company employee. "We apologize to Dow and to anyone who watched the interview who may have been misled by it," the BBC statement said. "Of course, the BBC is investigating how the deception happened." A BBC executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that BBC reporters preparing to cover the anniversary of the Bhopal disaster visited what seemed to be Dow's Web site and clicked onto a link for press contacts that provided a telephone number for Jude Finisterra in Paris. The man who identified himself as Finisterra told the reporters that there would be a significant announcement on the disaster anniversary of the disaster and offered to travel to London for an interview. But the BBC set up a what is called a two-way interview, with the interviewer in London and the interviewee in the BBC's Paris studio. In a separate BBC interview, this time on a lunchtime radio news show called The World at One, the same man said he represented an organization called "The Yes Men," whose Web site said it carries out "identity correction." "Honest people impersonate big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else," the Web site said. The organization said it also has targeted the World Trade Organization. The man who identified himself as Finisterra told BBC Radio that he was speaking "in a certain way" for Dow Chemical by setting out "the only reasonable thing for Dow Chemical to do." "If they are going to say something, this is what they must say," he said.