The descriptions make the men recognizable as Alex Beard, former head of Glencore oil, and Telis Mistakidis, former head of copper.
The documents, which Glencore accepted as true in one case and agreed not to deny as part of his guilty plea in the other, state that the widespread and persistent culture of bribery is not limited to local middlemen or fraudulent traders, but is maintained. by some of the company’s top executives. Both have been at Glencore for decades and were some of the closest lieutenants to former CEO Ivan Glazenberg before leaving about three years ago.
Beard did not comment on this article. Mistakidis did not respond to requests for comment. A Glencore spokesman declined to comment.
Numerous anti-corruption investigations have haunted the commodities industry for years, but have barely touched the industry’s top executives. This is the first time in decades that the highest echelons of the trade industry have been publicly called out by US regulators.
While U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Tuesday that personal responsibility is a priority in the Glencore case and more generally, the U.S. has secured a guilty plea from only two former mid-level Glencore retailers, Anthony Stimler and Emilio Heredia.
But in legal documents filed by the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the United States has made allegations about a number of other Glencore traders and executives, including Beard and Mistakidis.
“Glencore’s manipulative, fraudulent and corrupt behavior includes traders and other personnel throughout the oil trading group, including senior traders, bureau managers and supervisors up to and including the global oil group leader,” the CFTC said in part. from his settlement with Glencore. The company neither acknowledged nor denied the findings and conclusions of the CFTC order.
The world leader for Glencore in the period 2007-2018 was Beard.
The British trader worked at BP Plc before joining Glencore in 1995 and becoming head of oil in February 2007. Known for his insight into trading Russian oil, he retired from the company in 2019 and had a net worth of around £ 1.5 billion ($ 1.9 billion) in the latest list of the rich in the Sunday Times.
In a separate statement of facts that Glencore acknowledged as “true and correct” as part of its guilty plea, the Department of Justice referred to the conduct of several Glencore executives without naming them.
A person described as “CEO 1” agreed to pay $ 14 million through a West African brokerage company in 2011, “knowing that the money would be used at least in part to pay bribes to Nigerian officials,” according to the documentation.
The document describes “Executive 1” as a UK citizen who worked at Glencore from 1995 to 2019 and who was “responsible for the sale and purchase of Glencore oil worldwide” from 2007 to 2019. The beard meets this description.
Elsewhere in the same file, the United States said that Executive 3 was involved in a bribery scheme in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The CEO exchanged emails with the Glencore agent in the country, in which the agent said “we need political pressure” to win the contract dispute and suggested that a “reasonable amount of ammunition” would affect the case. A division of Glencore made a payment of $ 500,000 a few days later.
The document describes “Executive 3” as a Greek and British citizen employed in the copper and zinc department of Glencore from 1993 to 2018. Mistakidis meets this description. Essential, charming and multilingual, he joined Glencore in March 1993, was co-chaired of copper, lead and zinc in 2000 and retired in 2018. With an estimated fortune of £ 2.5 billion, most of coming from his share of Glencore, he ranked 71st on the Sunday Times list of the rich this year.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Kenneth Polit, the US assistant attorney general, emphasized the plea of Stimler and Heredia.
He added: “These are complex cases, especially when we have global partners. Where individuals may lie outside the United States, we coordinate with our law enforcement partners around the world to ensure that those individuals are held accountable wherever they sit. “
(By Jack Farchie and Jonathan Browning)
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