The United Kingdom subsidiary of mining and commodity trading group Glencore, has been ordered to pay over 200 billion CFA FRS (£281 million), for bribing some officials in Cameroon and across Africa to gain access to oil.
According to several news agencies, the huge sums of money were paid to state owned companies through private jets. With the use of ‘sham’ documents, they were able to hide the true purposes of the cash.
During the court hearing at Southward Crown Court, Glencore owned up to the bribery charges levied against them by the Serious Fraud Office. They were equally fined £182.9 million, while £93.5 million will be confiscated from them for carrying out illegal activities in some 5 countries.
To Judge Peter Fraser, the offences Glencore had pleaded guilty to represents “corporate corruption on a widespread scale, deploying very substantial sums of money in bribe”.
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 added.
According to Clare Montgomery who represented Glencore, the company however regrets its actions.
“The company unreservedly regrets the harm caused by these offences and recognizes the harm caused, both at national and public levels in the African states concerned, as well as the damage caused to others”.
Corruption Offences
In the month of June during a court hearing, Glencore pleaded guilty to 7 counts of bribery.
During investigations carried out by Serious Fraud Office, it was discovered that the mining giant, Glencore had funneled about $29 million worth of bribes between 2011 and 2016 through its workers and agents across its oil operations in Nigeria, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan.
The money was used to secure preferential access to bigger cargoes and more valuable grades of oil as well as preferred delivery dates, the SFO said earlier this year.
It was also found that, between 2012 and 2015, a Glencore trader and Nigerian agent withdrew a total $13.7 million in cash from Glencore’s Swiss cash desk. The cash was flown on a private jet to Cameroon, where it was used to bribe officials in the country’s national oil and gas companies.
In August 2011, two Glencore executives flew $800,000 in cash on a private jet from Switzerland to South Sudan. The money was recorded as an expense needed to open an office in the country, the SFO said. The money was paid via a local agent to officials in the newly established government in South Sudan. New York Times reported.
Glencore, founded in 1974, 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 primarily dealt in oil, with one of its crude oil divisions responsible for West Africa.