Glencore staff bribery charges delayed until later this year

The UK’s fraud prosecutor is to delay a long-awaited decision whether to charge as many as 11 ex-Glencore Plc employees involved in the widespread corruption perpetrated at the company.

The Serious Fraud Office intended to make individual charging decisions on executives by the end of April, but it has now pushed the date back until later this year, according to people familiar with the matter.

The commodity trading industry has been dogged by anti-corruption investigations for years, but few individual traders or bosses have faced prosecution. The SFO previously said the investigation into the individual Glencore employees makes allegations of serious criminality, but it did not confirm whether all 11 employees implicated were under investigation.

“Our bribery investigation into individuals connected to Glencore remains ongoing,” an SFO spokesperson said.

Glencore was hit with a £276 million ($343 million) fine in November by a London judge after pleading guilty to coordinating a sprawling effort to bribe government officials for access to oil cargoes across Africa.

Prosecutors focused in on the firm’s London trading desk, saying Glencore’s traders and executives paid more than $28 million in bribes to secure access to oil cargoes between 2011 and 2016.

A Glencore spokesperson declined to comment.

The SFO is in the middle of a shake up at the top of its leadership after director Lisa Osofsky announced she would step down from the role in August. A recruitment process for her successor is currently underway.

(By Katharine Gemmell and Jonathan Browning)