CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Ex-Glencore staff plead not guilty to Africa bribery charges
Four former Glencore Plc staffers charged with bribery offenses related to winning the commodity trading firm business in West Africa pleaded not guilty in London.
Martin Wakefield, David Perez, Paul Hopkirk and Ramon Labiaga appeared at Southwark Crown Court on Monday in the Serious Fraud Office prosecution. The four are all facing charges of conspiracy to give corrupt payments, while Perez and Wakefield also face one count of conspiracy to falsify invoices between 2007 and 2011.
The four men pleaded not guilty to all of the offenses. Andrew Gibson and Alexander Beard, the billionaire former head of oil at Glencore charged in the case, will enter their pleas at a later date.
The charges related to allegations the men conspired to win business for Glencore from state-owned companies in Cameroon, the Ivory Coast and Nigeria between 2007 and 2014. The offenses include allegations of payments of bribes to government officials and executives at state-run oil companies.
“We continue to progress our bribery case against six former Glencore employees ahead of trial on 4 October 2027,” a spokesperson for the SFO said on Monday.
Glencore was fined £276 million in 2022 over paying out corrupt payments in Africa, on top of around $1.1 billion the company already paid in related cases in the US and Brazil.
Beard is the most senior of the men charged with bribery offenses by the SFO, and was among Glencore’s longest-serving top executives before his departure in 2019. He became a billionaire in 2011, after Glencore listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Beard and Gibson, Glencore’s ex-head of oil operations, have previously indicated that they will plead not guilty.
(By Lucca de Paoli)
No comments:
Post a Comment