The UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has charged Beard, ex-Glencore head of oil, with corruption and bribing NNPC officials.
The billionaire former head of oil at Glencore Plc, Alex Beard, has been charged with corruption by the UK’s top fraud agency, 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.
The UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) accused Beard of conspiring to make corrupt payments to benefit Glencore’s oil operations in Nigeria and other West African Countries.
Specifically, the agency alleges that he 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 in May, the federal government said Glencore, a British mining and trading group, was expected to pay Nigeria a $50 million penalty for bribery.
Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, made the disclosure in Abuja during the ministerial sectoral update for the present administration.
He said the resolution was reached after the federal government entered a settlement agreement with the firm.
