Bribery: UK charges Glencore’s former CEO over oil contracts with NNPC

Alex Beard, the former chief executive director of Glencore, a British mining and trading group, has been charged to court in the United Kingdom, over alleged bribery in connection with oil contracts in West Africa.

Beard, a British billionaire businessman, was charged alongside four former employees of Glencore.

The others are Andrew Gibson, Paul Hopkirk, Ramon Labiaga, and Martin Wakefield.

In a statement published on Thursday, the UK’s serious fraud office (SFO) said the five Glencore employees have been charged in “connection with the awarding of a range of oil contracts variously spanning Cameroon, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast from 2007 to 2014”.

The SFO said Gibson and Wakefield have 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”.

The hearing of the case has been scheduled for September 10 at Westminster magistrates’ court.

Speaking on the development, Nick Ephgrave, director of SFO, said bribery damages financial marketers, adding that it causes lasting harm to communities.

“Today’s action is an important step towards exposing overseas corruption and holding those who are responsible to account,” Ephgrave said.

Glencore was involved in oil contract deals with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited and other oil corporations in West Africa.

GLENCORE’S BRIBERY COURT CASES

In May, the federal government said Glencore is expected to pay Nigeria a $50 million penalty for bribery.

Lateef Fagbemi, attorney-general of the federation, had said the resolution was reached after the federal government entered a settlement agreement with the British firm.

In May 2022, the United States department of justice said Glencore, and its UK subsidiaries, entered into multiple agreements to purchase crude oil and refined petroleum products from the NNPC through shady deals.

In Nigeria alone, the department said, Glencore and its subsidiaries paid more than $52 million to the intermediaries, intending that those funds be used — at least in part — to pay bribes to Nigerian officials.

In the same month, the trading firm agreed to pay about $1.5 billion in total to resolve investigations in the US, United Kingdom, and Brazil — of which $1.06 billion was payable to agencies in the US and Brazil.

A London court, in November 2022, had ordered Glencore to pay a $310.6 million (£276.4 million) penalty for seven bribery offences in relation to its oil operations in Africa.

Glencore had pleaded guilty to five counts of bribery totalling $26.9 million, which was paid “primarily to officials in state-owned oil companies” in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria.

The company also admitted to two charges of failing to prevent bribery over payments of approximately $1 million to agents in Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan, to secure “valuable oil contracts”.