Mining company Glencore hit with multimillion-pound fines and confiscation order

London court hears Glencore’s anti-bribery and corruption policies were 'largely ignored'

The headquarters of commodity trading company Glencore in Baar, central Switzerland. AFP

A London court has imposed a multimillion-pound confiscation order and fines on mining company Glencore in a major corporate conviction.

A part of the huge commodities business, Glencore Energy UK Limited admitted to five counts of bribery and two counts of failure to prevent bribery earlier this year.

Glencore was given a confiscation order of £93,479,338.95 ($104 million) on Thursday at Southwark Crown Court.

It was also fined a total of £182,935,392 and ordered to pay prosecution costs of £4,550,362.

“The facts demonstrate not only sustained criminality but sophisticated devices to disguise it, including drawing significant cash sums for other stated purposes that would be legitimate, such as the expenses of opening a new office, which were in reality used for corrupt purposes,” the judge said when passing sentence at the end of a two-day hearing.

“The bribery was across borders and in different jurisdictions.”

The judge said the company “played a leading role in organised and planned unlawful activity”, using agents and corrupting local officials in what was “an abuse of the defendant’s dominant market position”.

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  Evaporation pools at the new state-owned lithium extraction complex in the southern zone of Uyuni Salt Flat, Bolivia. AFP

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  A mine worker takes water samples from a brine pool at the Albemarle lithium mine in Calama. Bloomberg

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  A lorry carries a load of potassium chloride at the Albemarle lithium mine in Calama. Bloomberg

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  Workers at the Llipi pilot plant at Uyuni Salt Flat, south of Bolivia's capital La Paz. The country has more than 40 per cent of global lithium reserves. AFP

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  Brine pools at SQM lithium mine on the Atacama Salt Flat in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. Reuters

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  Bikita Minerals' mining plant in Bikita, 340 kilometres south of Zimbabwe's capital Harare. It is the only mine in Africa that produces world-class lithium pegmatite. Zimbabwe is the sixth-largest producer of lithium. EPA

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  Piles of salt, a byproduct of lithium extraction, at the new state-owned lithium extraction complex at Uyuni Salt Flat, Bolivia. AFP

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  Mountains provide a stunning backdrop to a lithium mine brine pool at the Atacama Salt Flat in Chile. Reuters

For some of the charges, he added, there were not “isolated acts of bribery that occurred on single occasions” but rather “the same techniques were used month after month, for the whole period covered by the relevant count in the indictment”.

“Bribery was clearly part of the culture for a number of personnel on the West Africa desk,” the judge added.

“These counts represent sophisticated offending that was sustained over prolonged periods of time that are measured in years.”

Confiscation is when a convicted party is ordered to pay back criminally obtained assets.

This is the first time a UK corporation has been convicted of authorising bribery from the top, rather than simply turning a blind eye to it at other levels.

The £93m fine is the largest amount that will have ever been recovered through confiscation in the UK, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) reported.

Sudan gold mining — in pictures

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  Gold mining residues are piled up near a residential area in the village of Banat, north of the Sudanese capital Khartoum. AFP

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  The four-year-old son of Awadya Ahmed, born blind and crippled, a handicap that she blames on a large mound of gold mining waste left near her house in Banat. AFP

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  Exposure to mercury, used to extract gold, poses particular risk to the nervous, digestive and immune systems. AFP

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  Exposure to mercury could be fatal, according to the World Health Organisation. AFP

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  Nafisa Ali Al Awad, 8, who is unable to walk or speak, a handicap believed to be caused by her exposure to gold mining residues, with her father. AFP

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  Gold mining residues near an agricultural field in Banat. AFP

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  Exposure to mercury also threatens the development of children in the womb and early in life, the WHO said. AFP

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  Mining remains a source of fast profits and attracts many living in dire conditions in Sudan, one of the world's poorest countries. AFP

The organisation said it is also a major corporate conviction and the first corporate prosecution under Section 1 of the Bribery Act 2010.

The SFO said it carried out a “large, highly complex” case reviewing more than one million documents and conducting interviews under caution.

Prosecutors said money to be used as bribes had often been flown by private jet.

The court heard that Glencore’s anti-bribery and corruption policies and procedures had been “largely ignored because corruption was condoned at a very senior level within the company generally”.

Prosecutor Alexandra Healy KC told the court this week that Glencore had pleaded guilty to “paying bribes through its agents and employees to officials in several jurisdictions for commercial advantages, namely securing crude oil cargoes at specific grades and on preferred dates”.

Payments were made in Nigeria, Cameroon and Ivory Coast “through intermediaries, agents and employees intending a portion to be paid as bribes to those concerned in allocating crude oil, primarily officials in state-owned oil companies”.

In Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan, Glencore made payments to its agents and “failed to prevent them from using a portion of those funds to pay bribes to officials in order to secure valuable oil contracts”.

The judge said Glencore has 30 days to make all of the payments ordered.

Describing the total costs as “significant”, the judge said that “other companies tempted to engage in similar corruption should be aware that similar sanctions lie ahead”.

“The SFO has today brought justice to bear and exposed what was a deliberate and endemic culture of bribery at Glencore,” said SFO director Lisa Osofsky.

“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.”