Glencore flew bribery cash across Africa in private jets - UK court hearing

Quantum Commodity Intelligence - A middleman paid by Glencore flew cash in private jets across Africa to bribe officials, a London court was told on Wednesday, as reported by the Financial Times.

A UK subsidiary of the commodity trader and mining group will be sentenced at Southwark Crown Court in south London this week after pleading guilty in June to seven counts of bribery spanning countries from Nigeria to Cameroon following a Serious Fraud Office probe.

Glencore has set aside $1.5 billion to settle a series of global probes, including about $1.1 billion for US authorities.

The final amount will be determined on Thursday, with the SFO's investigation focused on Glencore's London office and its West Africa trading desk, which sourced oil across the continent.

On Wednesday, a barrister representing the SFO said Glencore had paid a Nigerian middleman more than €4 million disguised as service fees.

Money was then transported, often by private jet, from Nigeria to Cameroon to a Glencore oil trader who used it to pay bribes, according to the SFO, with $13.7 million paid to officials in Cameroon's national oil and gas company and the country's national refinery over three years to March 2015.

The court heard Glencore had used a Swiss "cash desk" to dispense money to be used for bribery. The trader on the west Africa desk withdrew €6.3 million in cash from the desk through a series of transactions listed as "office expenses".

In South Sudan, Glencore officials travelled to the country shortly after its independence in 2011 with $800,000 in cash. That cash was falsely described as for "opening office in South Sudan, cash for office infrastructure, salaries, cars, etc." but was instead handed to agents who used it to bribe officials.

Glencore's non-executive chair Kalidas Madhavpeddi, who replaced Tony Hayward in a leadership overhaul last year, and general counsel Shaun Teichner both attended the court hearing Wednesday.

Clare Montgomery KC, representing Glencore, said the company's conduct was "inexcusable" and "had no place in Glencore," but that "these practices do not exist in any form in any of the Glencore companies" today.

The SFO carried out 72 hours of interviews with Anthony Stimler, a former Glencore trader who confessed to US bribery charges last year.