The UK’s Severe Fraud Workplace has charged Glencore’s billionaire former head of oil buying and selling with conspiring to make corrupt funds to learn the commodities firm’s oil operations in West Africa.
Alex Beard, who ran Glencore’s oil division from 2007 till his retirement in 2019, will face costs alongside former Glencore executives Andrew Gibson, Paul Hopkirk, Ramon Labiaga and Martin Wakefield after a long-running investigation into allegations of bribery on the firm.
Beard, who turned a billionaire when Glencore listed in London in 2011, is the best profile particular person charged after the SFO’s sweeping investigation into Glencore which started in 2019 below the codename Operation Azoth.
The SFO stated the executives have been charged in reference to the awarding of oil contracts spanning Cameroon, Nigeria and Ivory Coast from 2007 to 2014. They’re anticipated to seem at Westminster magistrates courtroom on 10 September.
Nick Ephgrave, the director of the SFO, stated: “Bribery damages monetary markets and causes lasting hurt to communities. Right now’s motion is a vital step in the direction of exposing abroad corruption and holding those that are accountable to account.”
Glencore pleaded responsible in 2022 to corruption and market manipulation circumstances within the US and UK, after admitting that it had paid bribes to win enterprise in eight international locations together with Brazil and South Sudan.
The corporate put aside as much as $1.5bn to settle two investigations in opposition to it within the US. The primary case concerned what prosecutors described as a decade-long bribery scheme, and within the second Glencore pleaded responsible to utilizing an eight-year scheme to control US gasoline oil worth benchmarks.
It was additionally ordered to pay greater than £280m within the UK after an SFO investigation revealed it paid $29m in bribes to realize preferential entry to grease in Africa in what a crown courtroom choose known as “extremely corrosive” and “endemic” corruption.
Beard will face two costs of conspiracy to make corrupt funds to authorities officers and officers of state-owned oil firms in Nigeria between 2010 and 2014, and Cameroon between 2007 and 2014.
He stepped down in July from his function as chair of Adaptogen Capital, the funding firm he arrange after leaving Glencore to put money into large-scale batteries related to the UK grid.
His second in command at Glencore, Gibson, will face 4 costs of conspiracy to make corrupt funds to authorities officers and officers of state-owned oil firms in Nigeria and Cameroon between 2007 and 2014, and Ivory Coast between 2007 and 2010. Gibson additionally faces one cost of conspiracy to falsify paperwork between 2007 and 2011.
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Hopkirk, Labiaga and Wakefield, who have been concerned in buying and selling West African oil, additionally stand accused of conspiring to make corrupt funds to authorities officers and staff at state-owned oil firms in Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Cameroon.
A Glencore spokesperson stated the corporate famous the fees and had “co-operated with the SFO in its investigation into this previous conduct and resolved its SFO investigation in 2022”.
“This (alleged) conduct has no place in Glencore and we’re dedicated to appearing ethically and responsibly throughout all points of our enterprise and have taken important motion in the direction of constructing a greatest in school ethics and compliance programme,” the spokesperson stated.
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