City corruption: Company of Tory donor Ayman Asfari paid tens of millions in bribes across Middle East October 3, 2021 A company whose biggest shareholder is a major Tory donor did not stop its employees from paying out more than £32m in bribes in order to secure a range of contracts across the Middle East. Petrofac, one of the world’s largest service providers to oil and gas producers, won business worth £2.7bn in Iraq, Saudi [...]
SFO launches money laundering probe into £150m leasehold investment schemes September 29, 2021 Following a dawn raid this morning, the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has launched a fraud and money laundering investigation into two companies that are suspected of having misled investors into funnelling around £150m into fraudulent leasehold schemes across the country. A group of Alpha-branded companies is being investigated for fraudulently misleading investors into purchasing [...]
Petrofac cuts plea deal with UK’s serious fraud watchdog September 25, 2021 Oil services group Petrofac has cut a plea deal with the UK’s fraud watchdog in a bid to bring a close to a long-standing inquiry. The London-listed group has been at the centre of a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) inquiry into suspected bribery, money laundering and corruption. Petrofac plead guilty to seven separate charges of [...]
City bribery: British American Tobacco accused of arranging Mugabe bribe September 13, 2021 One of the largest tobacco companies in the world has been accused of bribing Robert Mugabe, the former president of Zimbabwe. City-based British American Tobacco (BAT) was part of negotiations to pay between $300,000 and $500,000 to Zanu-PF, Mugabe’s political party in 2013, according to a BBC Panorama investigation, which will be aired this evening. [...]
Serious Fraud Office probing O2 bribery allegations September 5, 2021 Telecoms giant O2 is being investigated Serious Fraud Office reportedly over allegations of bribery involving the company’s executives. The company revealed in a financial statement that it is cooperating with the SFO, following its merger with Virgin Media. O2’s recent £31bn merger with Virgin Media makes the new company the UK’s largest network, ahead of [...]
Corruption in the City: Pinning down companies’ criminal accountability July 28, 2021 This summer marked 10 years since the UK Bribery Act 2010 came into force. Amongst many new powers granted under the law, a particularly significant one was that of the ‘failure to prevent’ corruption or bribery, under which businesses could be held liable and responsible for the actions of their subordinate, unless they had sufficiently [...]
Autonomy founder and billionaire Mike Lynch can be extradited to the US, court rules July 22, 2021 British tech billionaire and Autonomy founder Mike Lynch has lost an attempt to block extradition to the US on fraud charges, a court ruled today. Lynch faces decades in prison if found guilty over the £7.1bn sale of his software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011 and will go to California to answer criminal charges. [...]
Questions pile up for Gupta after ‘deeply discourteous’ inquiry snub July 14, 2021 MPs on the parliamentary business committee have written to steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta criticising his “deeply discourteous” decision not to appear before an enquiry into embattled Liberty Steel. They also questioned the “unusual extent to which you personally control the finances of Liberty Steeland its associated companies”. Gupta is the chief executive and chairman of [...]
‘Memory affected by long Covid’: Top City lawyer denies lying under oath July 9, 2021 City lawyer Neil Gerrard rejected the notion he lied under oath during a multimillion-pound High Court trial after text messages emerged suggesting he knew one of his client’s senior employees was secretly giving evidence to investigators. Gerrard and his firm Dechert represented Kazakh mining giant Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC) between 2011 and 2013, investigating [...]
UK Bribery Act 10 years on: Have City firms improved their anti-corruption conduct? July 1, 2021 Today it is ten years ago that the UK Bribery Act 2010 came into force, on 1 July 2011. What has changed? The law presented itself as a radical and comprehensive overhaul of UK anti-bribery and corruption law, while its introduction was spearheaded by the Ministry of Justice and Serious Fraud Office (SFO), looking to [...]