Glencore Energy UK, a subsidiary of Swiss mining company Glencore, has agreed to pay £280m in a penalty to resolve an investigation by the UK authorities.
According to the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation, the energy company had paid $29m in bribes to obtain special access to oil in Africa.
The current settlement, determined by the Southwark Crown Court, is part of previously announced settlements with authorities in the US, the UK, and Brazil.
In June this year, Glencore pleaded guilty to five counts of bribery and two counts of failure to prevent bribery under the UK Bribery Act 2010.
The current penalty includes a fine, a confiscation order for the profit it obtained from bribes, and complete reimbursement to SFO’s costs.
According to SFO, the total fine amount is the highest ever ordered in a corporate criminal conviction and the confiscation order marks the largest ever in a case it handled.
Serious Fraud Office director Lisa Osofsky said: “The SFO has today brought justice to bear and exposed what was a deliberate and endemic culture of bribery at Glencore.
“This has been a landmark case in UK anti-bribery enforcement, marking 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.”
In 2019, SFO initiated an investigation into Glencore, focused on the activity of the London-based West Africa desk, which sourced and traded in crude oil from Africa.
The investigation revealed that the company had paid bribes to maximise its oil trading profits in five African countries, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and South Sudan.
