The highest court in Switzerland has condemned the commercial giant of basic Trafigura products and one of its senior corruption executives on payments made by the company to access the Lucrative oil market in Angola.
In a historic case, the court gave the former British chief of the company Mike Wainwright – who also contributed as a race driver – a sentence of 32 months in prison and sentenced a fine to the ‘Company $ 148 million (119 million pounds sterling).
This is the first time that a whole company has been charged by the highest court in Switzerland, and corruption convictions for senior executives are rare.
Trafigura lawyers said they intended to appeal the verdict.
The case against Trafigura had all the elements of a financial thriller: millions of dollars, shaded intermediaries and a chain of screens located in offshore paradise like the Virgin Islands.
Trafigura’s strategy learned the court, was to set up a complex payment web, by which a head of the Angola petroleum company was paid nearly $ 5 million (4.02 million pounds Sterling; 4.81 €) between 2009 and 2011.
The documents presented in court by Swiss prosecutors have shown authorized payments on the Note of Trafigura.
The strategy seemed to work: in the coming years, the court said, Angola signed contracts with Trafigura worth almost $ 144 million (£ 115.93; € 138.56).
Trafigura, whose lawyers seemed bullish before the verdict, denied corruption. The company said that its own compliance and corruption measures had been assessed independently and deemed excellent.
But the weight of evidence – which included dozens of documents, emails and service notes – revealed a different image: strict anti -corruption measures on paper but a complex structure set up to escape these measures in reality. At the heart of it was seated an intermediary called “MR non-compliant” in an anonymous office in Geneva.
The case will send a cold thanks to brokers of raw materials worldwide, but especially in Geneva, where Trafigura and many other commercial houses of raw materials have its headquarters.
In a strange coincidence, the day before the verdict, a fire broke out at the Five Star hotel in the Bergues – where, an Angolan official has remained at the expense of Trafigura in 2008.
Swiss federal prosecutors hope that the case will be a symbol that the old ways of doing business are finally over.
They brought the accusations before the highest court in Switzerland, reserved for the worst crimes, such as terrorist offenses.
Trafigura is now faced with a large fine and Wainwright, who was in court for the verdict and denied the accusations, was informed that he had to serve at least a year of his 32 -month sentence in prison. However, he was not immediately detained while waiting for a call.
