Judge orders Glencore to pay millions over African bribes

The company paid $26m (£23m) through agents to officials of crude oil firms in Nigeria, Cameroon and Ivory Coast between 2011 and 2016.

The energy giant’s employees and agents used private jets to transfer the cash, prosecutors said.

The company pleaded guilty to seven charges of corruption in June.

Judge Peter Fraser at Southwark Crown Court ordered the company to pay a fine of £182.9m. He also approved the confiscation of £93.5m from the company.

In addition to bribery, the subsidiary admitted failing to stop agents from using bribes to obtain oil contracts in Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan.

Judge Fraser said the offences represented “corporate corruption on a widespread scale, deploying very substantial sums of money in bribes”.

“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.

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.”

Sentencing, Judge Fraser said that Glencore “engaged in corporate reform and today appears to be a very different corporation than it was at the time of these offences”.

Lisa Osofsky, director of the Serious Fraud Office, said the case was the first time since the introduction of the Bribery Act 2010 “that a corporate has been convicted for the active authorisation of bribery, rather than purely a failure to prevent it”.

“For years and across the globe, Glencore pursued profits to the detriment of national governments in some of the poorest countries in the world. The company’s ruthless greed and criminality have been rightfully exposed,” she added.