Using bribery to boost its oil earnings in five African nations, a British court on Thursday ordered commodities giant Glencore to pay more than 280 million pounds ($313 million).
The directive was issued months after the Anglo-Swiss corporation declared it had agreements in place with Brazilian, British, and American authorities to address charges of wrongdoing.
Glencore pleaded guilty in June to seven counts of bribery after an investigation launched by the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office in 2019 found it paid bribes worth a combined $29 million to gain access to oil in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and South Sudan.
The fraud office said the penalty is the largest for one of its cases and is the first time a company was convicted for authorizing bribery instead of just failing to prevent it under a 2010 law.
“The facts demonstrate not only significant criminality but sophisticated devices to disguise it,” Judge Peter Fraser of the Southwark Crown Court said in sentencing Glencore, adding that the bribery was “endemic” among traders and took place over an extended period. “Other companies tempted to engage in similar corruption should be aware that similar sanctions lie ahead.”
Glencore, which is headquartered in Baar, Switzerland, said it cooperated with the British investigation and “engaged in an extensive program of corporate reform.”
The British investigation found that the company would fly large amounts of cash by private plane to bribe officials in oil and gas companies and government ministries in African countries. Cash withdrawals were masked in financial reports as charges like service fees, signing bonuses, and office expenses.
For example, two Glencore executives took a private jet in August 2011 to deliver $800,000 in cash to a local agent to funnel to officials in South Sudan’s new government. An additional $275,000 followed.
Another trader took out millions of dollars from the company’s Swiss cash desk between 2012 and 2015, with the money brought on private jets to Cameroon to bribe officials in national oil and gas companies.
Following claims of bribery in other nations, including Brazil and the United States, as well as a case of market manipulation in the United States, Glencore agreed to settle all the investigations by paying fines up to $1.5 billion.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the corporation was accused of engaging in a “ten-year plot to make and hide illicit payments and bribes to foreign authorities in Africa and Latin America in order to get oil contracts, dodge government audits, and make litigation vanish.”
