WASHINGTON — Glencore, the mining and trading giant, has agreed to pay $1.1 billion to settle charges that two of its units bribed officials in different countries and manipulated oil prices.
The settlement, announced Tuesday by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, followed months of negotiations between the company and prosecutors in the United States, Britain and Brazil over Glencore’s operations in the US, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Venezuela and Nigeria dating back to 2018.
The announcement comes as gas prices have risen, largely as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and as the Biden administration, concerned about the potential impact of high prices on Democrats in November’s midterm elections, has struggled. to find effective ways to bring relief to Americans at the pump.
“The rule of law requires that there be not one rule for the powerful and another for the powerless, one rule for the rich and another for the poor,” said Garland, flanked by federal prosecutors and regulators from New York and Connecticut. reporters during a press conference at the department headquarters.
The settlement was no surprise. In February, the company set aside $1.5 billion in reserves to pay for fines and recoveries that could result from international investigations into its operations in a handful of resource-rich countries in Africa and South America.
As part of the settlement, two units of Glencore pleaded guilty and the company agreed to pay two separate fines: $700 million to resolve the bribery investigation and $485 million related to “a multi-year plan to manipulate benchmarks.” used to set oil prices at two of our nation’s busiest ports,” said Kenneth A. Polite Jr., chief of the department’s criminal division.
Two mid-market traders have pleaded guilty, one for conspiring to manipulate a fuel oil benchmark, the other for bribing officials in Nigeria for a favorable contract with a state oil conglomerate.
The company has yet to investigate in Switzerland, where it is based, and resolve the Netherlands, but executives said in a statement on the company’s website they believed they did not need to set aside any money beyond the $1.5 billion already set aside. .
Gary Nagle, the chief executive of Glencore, attempted to distance the company’s current leadership from executive activities four years ago by listing a series of internal controls put in place to ensure the company follows the law and accepted practices in the industry complies.
“We acknowledge the misconduct identified in these investigations and have cooperated with authorities,” he wrote in his statement. “This kind of behavior has no place in Glencore, and the board of directors, management team and I are very clear about the culture we want and our commitment to be a responsible and ethical operator wherever we work.”
