A Glencore subsidiary pleaded guilty to several bribery charges on Tuesday after admitting to bribing officials from countries from Nigeria to Cameroon, which marked a rare corporate conviction for corruption.
Glencore Energy UK lawyers have appeared before a judge to plead guilty to seven bribery charges following a Serious Fraud Office investigation into one of the world’s largest commodity traders. The company will be convicted in November.
Successful prosecution is SFO’s third corporate conviction under the Bribery Act of 2010 and makes Glencore the first company to admit to bribing a person in accordance with these rules.
The anti-corruption agency accused Glencore of profit-driven corruption last month in connection with oil operations in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria and South Sudan. The company indicated in May that it would plead guilty, but only formally filed the statements on Tuesday.
The SFO investigation revealed that Glencore had paid more than $ 28 million in bribes to ensure preferential access to oil, increased payloads, valuable oil grades and preferable delivery dates.
The agency is still suspending lawsuits against individuals as part of an ongoing investigation. The bribery cases have so far not been addressed to anyone in the company, which has provoked criticism from activist groups.
Glencore said last month that it has tightened compliance procedures in recent years and that “it’s not the company it was.”
The company on Tuesday pleaded guilty to charges such as paying 10.5 million euros to induce certain officials of Cameroon’s Société Nationale des Hydrocarbures and Société Nationale de Raffinage to gain benefits for Glencore’s operations in the country.
He also admitted to having paid 4.7 million euros in bribes between July 2011 and April 2016 to influence officials to favor the company in oil transactions in Côte d’Ivoire.
The conviction follows a series of international investigations into the company. Last month, Glencore agreed to pay $ 1.1 billion in fines and confiscation to U.S. authorities following a criminal investigation, and $ 40 million to Brazilian authorities.
Glencore has pleaded guilty in two separate criminal cases in the United States. One involved what prosecutors described as a bribery scheme for a decade, while in the second, Glencore’s U.S. commodities trading arm pleaded guilty to participating in an eight-year scheme to manipulate US fuel price benchmarks.
The company does not yet know what it will have to pay in the UK and will know when it will be convicted in November.
The anti-corruption group Spotlight on Corruption said the guilty verdicts were “very significant as a conviction for major corporate bribery,” but added that it was “critical” that the court impose a fine that reflects the staggering scale and severity of ‘this corporate crime, otherwise companies like Glencore.’ this will simply be canceled as the cost of doing business “.
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Other OFS bribery convictions against companies include a case against Petrofac last year in which the oil field service group pleaded guilty to failing to prevent senior executives from bribing officials to win contracts in Iraq. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The SFO also obtained a guilty plea from the professional services company Sweett Group in 2016.
The agency has more commonly resorted to deferred processing agreements in these cases, in which companies pay a fine to avoid criminal proceedings. The SFO has entered into such agreements with companies such as Rolls-Royce and Airbus.
Glencore revealed last week that it expects to make more money in six months than it normally generates with its marketing business for an entire year, as commodity traders benefit from rising prices and volatility after invasion of Ukraine by Russia.