Mining corporation Glencore was yesterday (21 June) convicted of bribing officials in Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan, after pleading guilty at Southwark Crown Court in London.
The Anglo-Swiss company admitted that its employees and agents paid bribes worth USD 28 million, with the company’s authorisation, to gain access to oil. I has received seven convictions, five for bribery and two for failure to prevent bribery, under the Bribery Act.
Glencore will be sentenced on 2 and 3 November. The company had previously indicated its intention to plead guilty in May, at which time it also revealed settlements worth USD 1.187 billion with the US Department of Justice and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and USD 40 million with the Brazilian Federal Prosecutor’s office.
The prosecution was brought against Glencore UK Ltd and a subsidiary, following ‘Operation Azoth’, an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), in conjunction with authorities in the United States, Netherlands and Switzerland.
In May, when the charges were announced,
Lisa Osofsky said in a statement: “This significant investigation, which the Serious Fraud Office has brought to court in less than three years, is the result of our expertise, our tenacity and the strength of our partnership with the US and other jurisdictions.”
In another May statement, Glencore chief executive, Gary Nagle, said: “We acknowledge the misconduct identified in these investigations and have cooperated with the authorities. This type of behaviour has no place in Glencore, and the board, management team and I are very clear about the culture that we want and our commitment to be a responsible and ethical operator wherever we work. We have taken significant action towards building and implementing a world-class ethics and compliance programme to ensure that our core controls are entrenched and effective in every corner of our business.”
Company chairman Kalidas Madhavpeddi added: “Glencore today is not the company it was when the unacceptable practices behind this misconduct occurred. The board and the management team are committed to operating a company that creates value for all stakeholders by operating transparently under a well-defined set of values, with openness and integrity at the forefront.”
Glencore still faces the prospect of civil action on behalf of shareholders whose investments lost value due to the bribery charges. In 2018, after news of the investigation became public, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan
on behalf of investors. Plans for this claim are believed to still be ongoing.
The SFO has suffered a series of scandals and failures in recent years,
, following a period in which it is believed to have overhauled its internal processes.
The DoJ and other US authorities, meanwhile,
, particularly in the commodities sector.