GLENCORE’S former head of oil, Alex Beard, has been charged with bribery offences relating to the Swiss commodity trader’s operations in Africa, Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said yesterday.
Beard, 56, was charged with two conspiracies to make corrupt payments to government officials and officials of state-owned oil companies in Nigeria between 2010 and 2014 and in Cameroon between 2007 and 2014, the SFO said.
He is one of five ex-Glencore employees charged with conspiracy to make corrupt payments.
Andrew Gibson and Martin Wakefield had also been charged in relation to the falsification of invoices to Glencore’s London office marked as service fees to a Nigerian oil consultancy from 2007 to 2011.
A hearing is scheduled for 10am on September 10 at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in the UK.
Director of the Serious Fraud Office, Nick Ephgrave QPM, said, “Bribery damages financial markets and causes lasting harm to communities. Today’s action is an important step towards exposing overseas corruption and holding those who are responsible to account.”
In November 2022, Glencore Energy UK said it would pay £281 million (R7.2 billion) after a UK SFO investigation revealed it paid $29m (R527m) in bribes to gain preferential access to oil in Africa.
At the time Southwark Crown Court Justice Fraser reflected in his judgment that “the facts demonstrate not only significant criminality but sophisticated devices to disguise it” before sentencing the commodities trading giant to pay a financial penalty in response to the seven charges of bribery that “represent sophisticated offending that was sustained over prolonged periods of time”.
Justice Fraser remarked on the culture that developed at Glencore “in which bribery was accepted as part of the West Africa desk’s way of doing business … The corruption is of extended duration … It was endemic amongst traders on that particular desk … Bribery is a highly corrosive offence”.
“It quite literally corrupts people and companies, and spreads like a disease.”
REUTERS AND BR REPORTER