Glencore ordered to pay $314 million by UK court for Africa bribes
/The UK subsidiary of Swiss mining giant Glencore was ordered to pay £281 million ($314 million) in the United Kingdom on Thursday for bribes in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, and South Sudan.
Glencore Energy (UK) pleaded guilty in June to five counts of bribery and two counts of failure to prevent bribery under the UK Bribery Act 2010.
The sentencing is the largest corporate penalty ever imposed by a UK court.
Glencore employees flew $800,000 in cash to South Sudan in a private jet shortly after its independence in August 2011. The cash was later given to agents and used to bribe public officials, the UK Serious Fraud Office said.
The SFO said within days of the arrival of the cash in the capital city of Juba, Glencore’s “fortunes changed” and it was awarded valuable contracts.
At sentencing in the Southwark Crown Court, the judge said “the facts demonstrate not only significant criminality but sophisticated devices to disguise it . . . sustained over prolonged periods of time.”
SFO director Lisa Osofsky said the case is “a landmark” in UK anti-bribery enforcement and “the first time since the introduction of the Bribery Act 2010 that a corporate has been convicted for the active authorization of bribery, rather than purely a failure to prevent it.”
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