The National Hydrocarbons Corporation (SNH) has finally admitted that some of its managers and employees were involved in the bribery scandal with Swiss commodity trader, Glencore and will appear before a UK court.
The state oil firm that had previously denied employees’ involvement with Glencore’s conspiracy to make corrupt payments to benefit the company’s oil operations in West Africa including in Cameroon said on Friday, August 2 that some employees had been identified as suspects and would appear before a British court on September 10, 2024.
The Executive General Manager of SNH, Adolphe Moudiki’s statement did not say who and how many of the state’s most important company’s employees were involved in the scandalous deal, but his statement came a day after billionaire and ex-head of oil trading at Glencore Plc, Alex Beard was charged with corruption by the UK’s top fraud agency.
$79.6 million paid in bribes
According to the US Department of Justice, between 2007 and 2018, Glencore and its subsidiaries caused approximately $79.6 million in payments to be made to intermediary companies in order to secure improper advantages to obtain and retain business with state-owned and state-controlled entities in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, and Equatorial Guinea.
Glencore concealed the bribe payments by entering into sham consulting agreements, paying inflated invoices, and using intermediary companies to make corrupt payments to foreign officials.
In June 2022, Glencore International A.G. and Glencore Ltd, both part of a multinational commodity trading and mining firm headquartered in Switzerland, each pleaded guilty and agreed to pay over $1.1 billion to resolve the investigations into violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and a commodity price manipulation scheme.
On Thursday August 1, Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) charged Glencore’s former head of oil Alex Beard with two conspiracies to make corrupt payments to government officials and employees of state-owned oil companies in Nigeria and in Cameroon. Beard led Glencore’s oil division from 2007 until his retirement in 2019.
“SNH welcomes the progress of proceedings against the perpetrators and accomplices of the acts of corruption that have tarnished its image,” Moudiki said in the statement without details of the number and identities of the persons involved.
Glencore’s UK subsidiary has admitted it paid bribes in Cameroon to SNH officials and others to the sum of FCFA 7 billion ($11 million) to secure preferential access to oil between 2011 and 2016.
Akere Muna tackles SNH despite progress
Anti-corruption and good governance advocate, Barrister Akere Muna exposed the Glencore scandal over two years ago and has since been calling for the naming and shaming of those involved in the shady deal.
After the UK’s SFO charged Beard, he rejoiced that the names of those who were involved are about to be revealed. On the UK side, he said the former head of oil trading will face corruption charges alongside former Glencore executives Andrew Gibson, Paul Hopkirk, Ramon Labiaga, and Martin Wakefield.
“Glencore had set up two payment counters, one in the UK (closed in 2011) and another in Geneva (closed in 2016), as well as using private jets to transport cash from Nigeria to Cameroon,” Akere Muna said in a statement on X (formerly Twitter).
“I urge Cameroonians in the UK to join me in organizing a peaceful march to present a petition to the UK Attorney General, requesting the disclosure of the names of the corrupt individuals,” Akere Muna said further.
Akere Muna described the SNH statement as “absurd” saying when he exposed the scandalous deal, the firm claimed there couldn’t be any corruption as it was prohibited by their internal regulations. But following the UK’s disclosure of the names of the former Glencore employees facing charges, the state-owned company says it lodged a complaint in September 2023.
“The culprits are within Cameroon, the transactions that gave rise to the corruption took place in Cameroon yet they expect us to believe the solution will come from London,” said Akere Muna, a member of the African Union High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa, chaired by H.E. Thabo Mbeki,
Bribe receivers blocking procedure
Speaking earlier at a press briefing to mark the African Anti-Corruption Day commemorated annually on July 11, the legal expert, who goes against the grain, bemoaned the fact that although the misdeed had been established with evidence and documents, with Glencore recognising that they disbursed money out, there are strong concerns that the masses have been robbed.
He said then that there is an urgent need to put pressure to get the names of those involved. Akere also stated that: “We have the right today to cancel all these contracts, to claim all the profits they made which according to my evaluation stands at a minimum of FCFA 900 billion. We have money to take. The people blocking this procedure must be those who have received something”.
Cameroonians are also still awaiting results of an investigation into the bribery offences that the National Anti-Corruption Commission (CONAC) announced in July 2022.
SNH is a state company that sells the share of national crude oil production accruing to the state on the international market.
