Former Rolls-Royce staff plead guilty to US charges

Bloomberg

Two former Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc executives pleaded guilty to US charges that
they orchestrated international bribes at the engine maker for more than a decade.
The cases, also involving three other individuals, focus on efforts to secure a $145 million contract to power a gas pipeline from Kazakhstan to China. The action comes about 10 months after Rolls-Royce agreed to pay $800 million to resolve probes in the US, UK and Brazil. The bribes occurred from 1999 to 2013 in Africa, the Mideast and South America, prosecutors said.
The guilty pleas were unsealed in federal court in Ohio. James Finley, formerly responsible for energy sales at Rolls-Royce, pleaded guilty in July to two charges, including conspiring to violate the foreign corruption law. Keith Barnett, also once a senior executive, admitted a single conspiracy charge.
Rolls-Royce said it’s committed to “full ongoing co-operation” with the US Department of Justice but can’t comment on actions against individuals, adding that the energy business involved was divested in 2014. The group’s shares were trading 0.7 percent lower at 969 pence as of 9:46 am in London.
Aloysius Zuurhout, a former employee at a Dutch subsidiary of Rolls, also admitted a single charge, as did Andreas Kohler, a consultant to Asia Gas Pipeline LLC, a venture between China and Kazakhstan that helped facilitate bribes to at least one Kazakh official. Lawyers for the four men didn’t respond to requests.
Petros Contoguris, a Turkey-based adviser on oil and gas projects, was indicted on 19 charges including arranging corrupt payments and money laundering. Rolls made payments to his company knowing that funds would be shared with a high-ranking Kazakh official of KazMunayGas National Co., according to prosecutors.
The investigation started
in 2012 after allegations
of bribery at Rolls-Royce emerged in various internet postings, provoking the company to tell the UK’s Serious Fraud Office about them. Rolls started an internal inquiry, and in 2013 the SFO opened a formal probe which the agency said is continuing.