By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Some managers and employees of Cameroon’s state-owned oil company will appear before a court in the United Kingdom over their alleged involvement in bribery offences linked to Swiss commodity trader Glencoe, the National Hydrocarbons Corporation (SNH) has vowed.
SNH’s administrator, Adolphe Moudiki and the Director General, had previously denied involvement of the firm’s staff in the suspected graft.
They however made a u-turn late Friday and issued a statement saying some employees had been identified as suspects and would appear before a British court on September 10.
“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 however reveal the names of staff involved in the alleged offence.
Glencoe’s UK subsidiary had in June 2022 pleaded guilty at a London court to seven count charges of bribery in connection with oil operations in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and South Sudan.
On Thursday, 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 Cameroon.
Glencoe’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.
Cameroonian lawyer and anti-corruption specialist Akere Muna said SNH should disclose identities of those involved and suspend all dealings with Glencore.
“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 Muna, a former vice-chairperson of corruption watchdog Transparency International.
In July 2022, Cameroon’s state anti-corruption commission said an investigation into the bribery offences was underway.
Since then, no further details have been disclosed in connection with the findings.
SNH is a state company that sells the share of national crude oil production accruing to the state on the international market.
Back in Nigeria, Heritage Times HT recalls how in 2021 report emerged that a former United Kingdom-based trader for Glencoe Plc, Anthony Stimler, bribed officials of the West African country’s state-owned oil firm, in exchange for favourable contracts from the defunct Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Mr Stimler, acting through subsidiaries of Glencore allegedly conspired with others to make millions of U.S. dollars in corrupt bribe payments to officials in Nigeria.
The former trader pleaded guilty over what prosecutors in the United States described as his role in a scheme to bribe and he admitted to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and commit money laundering at a hearing in Manhattan federal court conducted by video.
Prosecutors said millions of dollars in bribes were paid to officials in Nigeria, in exchange for NNPC awarding oil contracts and providing “more lucrative grades of oil on more favorable delivery terms”.
