LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Serious Fraud Office aims to decide whether to charge any ex-Glencore employees with bribery offences by the end of 2023, the agency's lawyers told a London court on Monday.
The SFO is investigating former employees of Glencore (LON:GLEN)'s UK subsidiary Glencore Energy UK Limited over potential criminal offences in relation to its operations in West Africa.
The SFO's decision has been delayed before. The agency said in October it aimed to make a decision in relation to 11 individuals employed by or associated with Glencore by April, but this was pushed back earlier this year.
The SFO now hopes to make a decision on bringing criminal charges by the end of 2023, its lawyer Alexandra Healy said at a hearing at London's Southwark Crown Court on Monday.
The ex-Glencore employees who are under investigation by the SFO have been granted anonymity pending a decision by the SFO on whether to bring criminal charges.
Glencore's UK subsidiary last year admitted seven bribery offences related to paying – or failing to prevent the payment of – millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and South Sudan.
At its sentencing in November, prosecutors told the court that Glencore employees and agents used private jets to transfer cash to pay bribes to officials in Cameroon and South Sudan.
Glencore was ordered to pay a total penalty of 276.4 million pounds ($352 million) for its offending, which the sentencing judge described as "endemic" corruption.