In a London court on Thursday, a mining and trading company named Glencore was forced to pay a total of £276.4 million ($310.6 million) in fines for seven bribery violations involving its oil activities in Africa.
Judge Peter Fraser of Southwark Crown Court imposed a £182.9 million fine and authorised a £93.5 million confiscation order on Glencore Energy UK Limited.
“This is a significant overall total,” the judge said. “Other companies tempted to engage in similar corruption should be aware that similar sanctions lie ahead.”
According to the court, the crimes to which Glencore had pled guilty involved “corporate corruption on a widespread scale, deploying very substantial sums of money in bribes.”
He added: “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.”
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) of Britain informed the court on Wednesday that Glencore Energy UK Limited had paid bribes totaling millions of dollars to authorities in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and South Sudan—as well as failing to stop them from doing so.
According to the prosecution, corporate employees and agents transferred money to pay bribes using private aircraft.
The UK affiliate admitted admission to the seven bribery offences in June.
A global corporation with its headquarters in Switzerland named Glencore stated in May that it anticipated paying up to $1.5 billion in response to claims of bribery and market manipulation in Brazil, Britain, and the United States.
Clare Montgomery, representing Glencore, said: “The company unreservedly regrets the harm caused by these offences and recognises the harm caused, both at national and public levels in the African states concerned, as well as the damage caused to others.”
Judge Fraser said in his sentencing remarks: “Glencore has engaged in corporate reform and today appears to be a very different corporation than it was at the time of these offences.”
In a statement, Chairman of Glencore Kalidas Madhavpeddi, who was present during the two-day sentence session, said: “The conduct that took place was inexcusable and has no place in Glencore.”
According to the blue-chip business, Glencore has “engaged in an extensive programme of corporate reform.”
Additionally, the firm stated that the punishment “completely ends” the UK authorities’ investigation and that the total payments made to end investigations in the US, Brazil, and UK “do not differ materially from the $1.5 billion provision recorded in Glencore’s FY2021 results.”
The sentence “sends a message [about] the seriousness of the offences and the fact that the SFO is determined to prosecute criminals, regardless of the complexity and of the type of actors,” said Sara Chouraqui, joint head of fraud, bribery, and corruption at the SFO, outside court.
