Glencore Energy UK Limited, a subsidiary of Swiss mining and trading giant, has been ordered to pay a total penalty of 276.4 million pounds ($310.6m) by a London court for seven bribery offences in relation to its oil operations in Africa.
The Presiding Judge of the Southwark Crown Court, Peter Fraser ordered the company to pay a fine of £182.9m and also approved £93.5m ($105m) to be confiscated from the company.
The company paid $26m (£23m) through agents and employees to officials of crude oil firms in Nigeria, Cameroon and Ivory Coast between 2011 and 2016.
Prosecutors said Glencore Energy UK employees and agents used private jets to transfer cash to pay the bribes.
The judge said the offences to which Glencore had pleaded guilty represented “corporate corruption on a widespread scale, deploying very substantial sums of money in bribes.
“The corruption is of extended duration and took place across five separate countries in West Africa but had its origins in the West Africa oil trading desk of the defendant in London. It was endemic amongst traders on that particular desk,” he said.
On Wednesday, Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) told the court that Glencore Energy UK Limited paid–or failed to prevent the payment of–millions of dollars in bribes to officials in the five African countries.
“The bribery was a process that went on for several years in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and South Sudan,” he said.
“Some of the more lurid details that have been heard over the last couple of days in the court were that Glencore paid middlemen to fly cash around Africa in private jets, taking them from country to country to bribe officials.”
Glencore, a Swiss-based multinational said in May, it expected to pay up to $1.5bn in relation to allegations of bribery and market manipulation in the United States, Brazil and the United Kingdom.
Clare Montgomery, representing Glencore, said: “The Company unreservedly regrets the harm caused by these offences and recognises the harm caused, both at national and public levels in the African states concerned, as well as the damage caused to others.”
Judge Fraser said in his sentencing remarks: “Glencore has engaged in corporate reform and today appears to be a very different corporation than it was at the time of these offences.”
Source: https://energynewsafrica.com