In 2022, the Swiss mining giant Glencore International was found responsible for sending cash bribes and corrupt payments to Equatorial Guinea, amongst other African countries such as Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Nigeria. Prosecution against Glencore International was a coordinated effort across several civil authorities in the U.K., U.S. and Brazil. The U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) opened its investigation into Glencore’s activities in Equatorial Guinea in 2019, and uncovered a trail of text messages, large cash withdrawals and deliberately concealed payments.
Glencore paid bribes worth a total of US$29m in order to secure access to oil. It was also exposed that the company used high-profile agents to funnel bribes into state-owned oil companies and government ministries, often disguising bribes as unspecified ‘service fees’ or ‘success fees’ in reports. In addition, Glencore and some of its employees were convicted by the U.S’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for manipulating benchmark price assessments for fuel oil products between January 2011 and August 2019. This manipulation was aimed at artificially inflating or deflating prices to benefit Glencore's physical contracts and derivative positions.
Keywords: Sub-Saharan Africa, Equatorial Guinea, minerals, primary production, corruption and bribery
Sources: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/glencore-entered-guilty-pleas-foreign-bribery-and-market-manipulation-schemes
https://www.sfo.gov.uk/2022/11/03/glencore-energy-uk-ltd-will-pay-280965092-95-million-over-400-million-usd-after-an-sfo-investigation-revealed-it-paid-us-29-million-in-bribes-to-gain-preferential-access-to-oil-in-africa/