Glencore condemns former employee who pleaded guilty to oil contract bribery

GLENCORE condemned the conduct of a former employee who pleaded guilty on Monday of having bribed officials in Nigeria in exchange for favourable contracts from the country’s state-owned oil company.

The matter was earlier reported by Bloomberg News and Reuters.

Glencore has been under investigation by the US Department of Justice and the UK’s Serious Fraud Office and other authorities for several years on allegations of bribery in its Africa and South America activities.

“The conduct described in the plea is unacceptable and has no place in Glencore,” the Swiss-headquartered group said in a statement. It had cooperated fully with the DoJ and other authorities in their investigations “and continues to do so”, it said.

Reuters said that Anthony Stimler admitted to conspiring to both violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and commit money laundering at a hearing in Manhattan federal court conducted by video.

Prosecutors said millions of dollars in bribes were paid to officials in Nigeria and elsewhere, in exchange for Nigerian National Petroleum Corp awarding oil contracts and providing “more lucrative grades of oil on more favorable delivery terms.”

Court papers refer to seven alleged co-conspirators from several countries in the bribery scheme, which prosecutors said ran from 2007 to 2018. None was charged or identified by name.

Stimler worked on Glencore’s West Africa desk from around 2002 to 2009 and again from around 2011 to 2019, court papers show.

In March, former Glencore oil trader Emilio Jose Heredia Collado pleaded guilty in San Francisco to manipulating a key oil price benchmark, said Reuters.