A British subsidiary of mining giant Glencore has been sentenced to pay more than £275million for bribing officials in African countries to gain access to oil.
The company paid US$26 million (£23 million) through agents and employees to crude oil company officials 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.
Glencore Energy UK pleaded guilty to seven corruption offenses in June.
It was ordered to pay a fine of £182.9million by Judge Peter Fraser at Southwark Crown Court, who also authorized confiscation of £93.5million from the company.
Alongside five allegations of bribery, the subsidiary acknowledged allegations of failing to prevent agents from using bribes to secure oil deals in Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan.
Judge Fraser said the offenses Glencore pleaded guilty to “constituted corporate corruption on a widespread scale, involving the use of very substantial sums of money in bribes”.
“The corruption is long-standing and took place in five different West African countries, but originated in the defendant’s West African oil trading division in London. It was endemic among traders in that particular department,” he added.
Founded in 1974, Glencore is one of the largest multinational commodity trading and mining companies in the world.
Its subsidiaries operate in more than 35 countries, but Glencore’s London office traded primarily in oil, with one of its crude oil divisions covering West Africa.
- Mining company Glencore admits to British bribery allegations
On Wednesday, the Serious Fraud Office told Southwark Crown Court that Glencore Energy UK paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials in five African countries or failed to prevent payment.
The bribery allegations said the company’s aim was for officers to “fail to perform their duties properly, or reward them for doing so, by unduly favoring Glencore Energy UK in the allocation of crude oil loads, the dates crude oil is lifted and grades.” allocated to crude oil”.
In 2018, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) opened an investigation into Glencore’s compliance with US money laundering and corruption laws, which date back to 2007. It covered the mining giant’s activities in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Venezuela.
The UK SFO followed suit in 2019, investigating one of Glencore’s UK subsidiaries over “suspicion of bribery” in Africa.
The Serious Fraud Office previously said its investigation uncovered “profit-making bribery and corruption”.
Clare Montgomery, Glencore representative, said: “The company unreservedly regrets the damage caused by these crimes and recognizes the damage caused both at the national and public levels in the affected African states as well as the damage , which was inflicted on others.”
Judge Fraser said in his sentencing statement that Glencore “has engaged in corporate reform and appears to be a very different company today than it was at the time of these offences”.
Lisa Osofsky, director of the Serious Fraud Office, said the case was the first time since the introduction of the Bribery Act 2010 “that a company has been convicted of actively authorizing bribery and not just a failure to prevent it”.
“For years and around the world, Glencore has pursued profits at the expense of national governments in some of the world’s poorest countries. The company’s ruthless greed and crime were rightly exposed,” she added.
In May, the firm reached a $1.1bn (£900m) settlement in the US over a program to bribe public officials in seven countries over the course of a decade.
It covered the mining giant’s activities in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Venezuela.
Add Comment