Glencore: Nigeria Silent, Cameroon Oil Firm Says Staff Linked to Bribes to Face UK Court

The head of Cameroon’s National Hydrocarbons Corporation (SNH) at the weekend said some managers and employees will appear before a UK court over suspected involvement in bribery offences linked to Swiss commodity trader Glencore.

The UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) had accused the billionaire former head of oil at Glencore Plc, Alex Beard, of conspiring to make corrupt payments to benefit Glencore’s oil operations in Nigeria and other West African countries.

Specifically, the agency alleged that Beard conspired to make the payments to government officials and employees of state owned oil firms in Nigeria between 2010 and 2014, and Cameroon between 2007 and 2014.

But while Nigeria’s oil company had yet to make any comment, Adolphe Moudiki, SNH’s administrator and director general, who had previously denied staff involvement at the weekend issued a statement saying some employees had been identified as suspects and would appear before a British court on September 10.

Beard was charged alongside four other ex-employees from the commodities trader. Beard, 56, who was one of Glencore’s top executives for more than a decade before his departure in 2019, is the highest profile individual to be charged in a sweeping series of investigations into corruption and market manipulation at the company – and one of the most senior commodity traders ever to be charged with wrongdoing.

But in May, the federal government had said Glencore, a British mining and trading group, was expected to pay Nigeria a $50 million penalty for bribery.

In June 2022, Glencore’s UK subsidiary pleaded guilty at a London court to seven counts of bribery in connection with oil operations in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and South Sudan.

“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. He did not say how many SNH staff were involved.

Glencore’s UK subsidiary has admitted it paid bribes in Cameroon to SNH officials and others to the sum of 7 billion CFA francs ($11 million) to secure preferential access to oil between 2011 and 2016.