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O texto que se segue está rondando o mundo e pode ser aprofundado no dossier do site http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/serious-fraud-office. Vamos mante-lo na sua versão inglesa para garantir a sua originalidade e aproveitamos pedir desculpas aos nossos leitores que não estejam familiarizados com a lingua. Poderemos traduzi-los se assim for a vossa vontade.
Esta materia não foi produzida no vale do Zambeze, lógico, mas pela sua amplitude, o Portal de Sena decidiu compartilha-la com todos na esperança de ver a defesa dos nossos conterraneos aqui arolados.
BRITISH COMPANY BRIBED SENIOR MOZAMBICAN OFFICIAL
A court in London has found a British construction firm, Mabey and Johnson (M&J) guilty of systematically bribing officials around the world, including in Mozambique, to win lucrative contracts.
The case was brought by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO). M&J admitted all the charges, and cooperated with the prosecution, blaming the scandal on the previous Board of Directors.
The Mozambican official bribed by M&J was Carlos Fragoso, who at the time was National Director of Roads and Bridges in the Ministry of Public Works.
According to the prosecution’s opening statement against M&J, the company "retained an Export Agent’s Commission card for Mozambique in the name of C. Fragoso". That card recorded that M&J made payments to Fragoso of 287,000 pounds (about 460,000 US dollars, at current exchange rates), between 14 October 1997 and 10 April 2000.
A second Mozambican under suspicion was Foreign Ministry official Americo Fortuna. He and Fragoso met with M&J to discuss a contract for supplying spare parts, and the M&J records describe him as someone "who is involved to some extent in the selection of eligible recipients".
The SFO found an Export Commission Card for Mozambique for 1996-1998 in the name of a "Fortuna", listing payments of over 42,000 pounds to several companies. But the SFO could not confirm that Fortuna was indeed connected to these companies. The M&J records about them "are no longer available", the prosecutors said.
Another Mozambican name on the M&J Export Commission Cards was a "Mr Notece", an engineer in the National Roads and Bridges Directorate. This card referred to a payment of 5,000 pounds, and the SFO concluded that "in total Mr Notece was paid 25,000 pounds in Mozambique".
Notece, the SFO said, seemed to have received the money in cash, while the bribe to Fragoso was paid into a Swiss bank account.
The bribe paid to Fragoso was the second largest that the SFO discovered, surpassed only by the 1.2 million pounds that M&J paid to Antonio Gois, the former general manager of the Angolan state bridges agency.
Among others, M&J also made illicit payments of 110,000 pounds to serving and former Ghanaian Ministers, 100,000 pounds to Joseph Hibbert, former works minister of Jamaica, and 33,000 pounds to Lt-Col Jean Tsaranasy, the former public works minister of Madagascar.
M&J was also found guilty of violating United Nations sanctions against Iraq (in the wake of the invasion of Kuwait) by illegally paying £363,000 to Saddam Hussein's dictatorship from 2001- 2002.
The SFO put the total amount of known bribes paid by M&J to foreign politicians and officials at about one million pounds. The company clearly thought this a price worth paying to obtain contracts valued at between 60 and 70 million pounds.
M&J pleaded guilty under a deal it struck with the SFO. It has agreed to pay out 6.5 million pounds mostly in fines and in reparations to the foreign governments affected by the bribes. Presumably the Mozambican government can expect to be paid a slice of this.
Some of the money demanded by the SFO is confiscation of profits, payment of the SFO’s legal costs, and payment of an independent monitor to observe M&J’s future conduct.
The company made its money by supplying bridge components, notably modular steel panel bridge systems, which it says are now installed in 115 countries across the globe. The Mabey family is reported to have built up a fortune of around 200 million pounds by selling these bridges.
The company issued a contrite press release on Friday, in which its new Managing Director, Peter Lloyd, said "What our company did in the past is a matter of deep regret. We have now made a fresh start, having wiped the slate clean of these offences".
He said the company’s new management had worked in full cooperation with the SFO "to enable these charges to be brought and a prosecution obtained. As a result the case has been disposed of as quickly and efficiently as possible".
Lloyd said he believed this cooperative approach "could act as a template for others facing a similar situation as we believe it secures the interests of justice in the most proper and effective way for all parties".
He claimed that the company has cleaned up its act and was putting ethics "at the heart of our business".
(AIM)
British firm Mabey and Johnson convicted of bribing foreign politicians
The SFO found an Export Commission Card for Mozambique for 1996-1998 in the name of a "Fortuna", listing payments of over 42,000 pounds to several companies. But the SFO could not confirm that Fortuna was indeed connected to these companies. The M&J records about them "are no longer available", the prosecutors said.
Another Mozambican name on the M&J Export Commission Cards was a "Mr Notece", an engineer in the National Roads and Bridges Directorate. This card referred to a payment of 5,000 pounds, and the SFO concluded that "in total Mr Notece was paid 25,000 pounds in Mozambique".
Notece, the SFO said, seemed to have received the money in cash, while the bribe to Fragoso was paid into a Swiss bank account.
The bribe paid to Fragoso was the second largest that the SFO discovered, surpassed only by the 1.2 million pounds that M&J paid to Antonio Gois, the former general manager of the Angolan state bridges agency.
Among others, M&J also made illicit payments of 110,000 pounds to serving and former Ghanaian Ministers, 100,000 pounds to Joseph Hibbert, former works minister of Jamaica, and 33,000 pounds to Lt-Col Jean Tsaranasy, the former public works minister of Madagascar.
M&J was also found guilty of violating United Nations sanctions against Iraq (in the wake of the invasion of Kuwait) by illegally paying £363,000 to Saddam Hussein's dictatorship from 2001- 2002.
The SFO put the total amount of known bribes paid by M&J to foreign politicians and officials at about one million pounds. The company clearly thought this a price worth paying to obtain contracts valued at between 60 and 70 million pounds.
M&J pleaded guilty under a deal it struck with the SFO. It has agreed to pay out 6.5 million pounds mostly in fines and in reparations to the foreign governments affected by the bribes. Presumably the Mozambican government can expect to be paid a slice of this.
Some of the money demanded by the SFO is confiscation of profits, payment of the SFO’s legal costs, and payment of an independent monitor to observe M&J’s future conduct.
The company made its money by supplying bridge components, notably modular steel panel bridge systems, which it says are now installed in 115 countries across the globe. The Mabey family is reported to have built up a fortune of around 200 million pounds by selling these bridges.
The company issued a contrite press release on Friday, in which its new Managing Director, Peter Lloyd, said "What our company did in the past is a matter of deep regret. We have now made a fresh start, having wiped the slate clean of these offences".
He said the company’s new management had worked in full cooperation with the SFO "to enable these charges to be brought and a prosecution obtained. As a result the case has been disposed of as quickly and efficiently as possible".
Lloyd said he believed this cooperative approach "could act as a template for others facing a similar situation as we believe it secures the interests of justice in the most proper and effective way for all parties".
He claimed that the company has cleaned up its act and was putting ethics "at the heart of our business".
(AIM)
British firm Mabey and Johnson convicted of bribing foreign politicians
A string of foreign politicians and officials were named as having received corrupt payments from a British firm today, as the company admitted it had systematically paid bribes around the world to win contracts.
The bridge-building firm, Mabey and Johnson, is the first major British company to be convicted of foreign bribery. Many of its contracts were financially supported by the British taxpayer.
The conviction by the
Serious Fraud Office comes as the fraud agency turns its attention to a bigger target, BAE, Britain's biggest arms firm.The SFO has given BAE until Wednesday to decide whether to bow to an ultimatum and agree to some version of a plea bargain over long-running corruption allegations.
Richard Alderman, the agency's director, has put his credibility on the line, and, according to Whitehall sources, is committed to asking law officers for consent to prosecute the arms giant if it fails to accept multimillion-pound penalties.
Today, at Southwark crown court, London, John Hardy QC for the SFO, revealed the names of 12 individuals in six countries alleged to have received bribes from the Reading-based Mabey and Johnson.
He said the company paid "a wide-ranging series of bribes" totalling £470,000 to politicians and officials in Ghana.
He identified five who travelled to Britain to collect sums of money from £10,000 to £55,000 from bank accounts in London and Watford.
Ministers and officials in Angola, Madagascar, Mozambique, Bangladesh, and Jamaica were also bribed, Hardy told the court.
Hardy said that over eight years, the firm gave £100,000 "to buy the favours" of Joseph Hibbert, a key Jamaican official in awarding contracts, one of them worth £14m.
The court was told how the firm, owned by one of Britain's richest families, paid bribes totalling £1m to foreign politicians and officials to get export orders valued at £60m to £70m through covert middlemen.
The Mabey family built up a fortune of more than £200m by selling steel bridges internationally.
The company also broke UN sanctions by illegally paying £363,000 to Saddam Hussein's government from 2001 – 2002.
This first conviction has been hailed as a landmark by the British government, which has been heavily criticised for failing to prosecute any UK firm for foreign bribery. Campaigners said the failure rendered the 1997 pledge to crack down on corrupt exporters worthless.
The firm will pay out more than £6.5m, including fines and reparations to foreign governments.
It pleaded guilty to corruption in a pioneering deal with the SFO. It is the first time the agency has concluded a US-style plea bargain with a firm accused of corruption overseas.
The company said it had reformed itself, stopped making corrupt payments, and got rid of five executives. Timothy Langdale, the firm's QC, said: "This is a new company. It is not the one which made these payments."
The SFO investigation continues to look into whether individuals should be prosecuted.
Overseas politicians and officials named as recipients of bribes from Mabey and Johnson
Ghana
Ato Qarshie (former roads minister) £55,000
Saddique Bonniface (minister of works) £25,500
Amadu Seidu (former deputy roads minister) £10,000
Edward Lord-Attivor (chairman inter-city transport corp) £10,000
Dr George Sepah-Yankey (health minister) £15,000
Madagascar
Zina Andrianarivelo-Razafy (permanent representative at the UN) $5,000
Lt-Col Jean Tsaranasy (former public works minister) £33,000
Jamaica
Joseph Uriah Hibbert (former works minister) £100,0000
Angola
Antonio Gois (former general manager state bridges agency) $1.2 m
Joao Fucungo (former director state bridges agency) $13,000
Mozambique
Carlos Fragoso (former head of DNEP, directorate of roads and bridges) £286,000
Bangladesh
Khandaker Rahman (chief engineer, roads & highways dept)
(Guardian, UK)
Adenda: queremos este dinheiro de volta no pais e ser aplicado no alivio a pobreza de criancas COV.
Baptista Joao
25,000 pounds mais 287,000 pounds (about 460,000 US dollars, at current exchange rates),como é que sairemos dessa pobreza? era de esperar que numa lista dessa moçambique nao daria falta.
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