MEXICO CITY – Trafigura Group pleaded responsible to a decade of bribery in Brazil, within the newest in a string of circumstances which have uncovered a widespread tradition of corruption contained in the world’s largest commodity merchants.
Trafigura entered a plea settlement with the US Division of Justice (DOJ) in a federal court docket in Miami on March 28. The corporate can pay a tremendous of US$80.4 million and forfeit US$46.5 million, according to the US$127 million it put aside in December to resolve the case.
Whereas its largest rivals have all admitted to paying bribes in recent times to resolve US investigations, that is the primary time that Trafigura has made such an admission.
The DOJ on Thursday criticised Trafigura for its stance at first of the investigation. “Significantly through the early section of the division’s investigation, Trafigura did not protect and produce sure paperwork and proof in a well timed method and, at instances, took positions that had been inconsistent with full cooperation,” it mentioned.
Trafigura’s “early posture in decision negotiations” compelled the US authorities to spend extra sources to develop additional proof earlier than the corporate “constructively reengaged,” it mentioned. The corporate was additionally gradual to train disciplinary measures for workers who violated firm coverage.
“For greater than a decade, Trafigura bribed Brazilian officers to illegally get hold of enterprise and reap over US$61 million in earnings,” mentioned Nicole Argentieri, head of the DOJ’s legal division.
The collection of years-long investigations led by the US have laid naked a surprisingly brazen tradition of wrongdoing in an trade that had lengthy sought to distance itself from a historical past of paying bribes to win enterprise.
Commodity buying and selling is dominated by a handful of principally privately owned corporations that function with little regulation and oversight, but wield big affect within the international economic system via their sprawling companies that purchase, promote and transport uncooked supplies around the globe. The trade collectively earned about US$100 billion in 2023, in line with estimates from consultancy Oliver Wyman LLC.
For Trafigura – one of many largest of the group – the responsible plea for wrongdoing between 2003 and 2014 is a contemporary stain on its repute after the corporate has spent the previous twenty years working to maneuver previous an incident involving the discharge of hazardous waste in Ivory Coast in 2006, which catapulted it into the worldwide highlight on the time.
“These historic incidents don’t mirror Trafigura’s values nor the conduct we count on from each worker. They’re significantly disappointing given our sustained efforts over a few years to embed a tradition of accountable conduct at Trafigura,” Chief Government Officer Jeremy Weir mentioned in a press release.
“We’re happy the DOJ acknowledged the steps we’ve taken to put money into our compliance perform: enhancing our insurance policies, procedures, processes and controls and from 2019, prohibiting the usage of third events for enterprise origination.”
The case is the most recent that originated with the sweeping Carwash probe that started a decade in the past in Brazil and uncovered huge corruption at state oil firm Petrobras. Trafigura’s rivals Vitol Group and Glencore Plc have already admitted they paid bribes in Brazil to settle wider corruption investigations into them, however Trafigura has till now denied expenses of wrongdoing.
When Brazilian prosecutors in 2020 sued Trafigura and a number of other of its executives in a civil lawsuit alleging corruption in its dealings with Petrobras, Trafigura mentioned the costs had been “not supported by proof.”
A former Petrobras dealer, Rodrigo Berkowitz, pleaded responsible within the US in 2019 to expenses that he took bribes from a number of buying and selling corporations and agreed to cooperate with investigators.
