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Swiss prosecutors are searching for a four-year jail sentence for Trafigura’s former chief working officer and $156mn in compensation and penalties from the corporate over an alleged “textbook” conspiracy to deprave a public official.
Trafigura and Michael Wainwright have been on trial at Switzerland’s federal legal court docket for the previous week, in a landmark case centred round Trafigura’s profitable push into Angola between 2009 and 2011.
The federal prosecutor alleges that the corporate paid greater than €5mn of bribes by way of third events to an Angolan authorities official in alternate for oil bunkerage and delivery contracts.
It’s the first such case towards a commodity buying and selling big to be introduced in Switzerland, the trade’s longtime centre of operations, and the primary globally towards a prime government in one of many firms.
Wainwright was the “linchpin of the scheme”, prosecutor Grégoire Mégevand instructed the court docket on Monday, in 5 hours of closing arguments. Trafigura’s COO for practically 16 years had “used strategies worthy of a seasoned legal” to disguise his actions, mentioned Mégevand.
Prosecutors allege that the scheme concerned the use of multiple intermediaries to “camouflage” the bribery scheme, and defend Trafigura and Wainwright from discovery.
They mentioned Wainwright took supply of USB sticks in envelopes containing account particulars about funds from one of many individuals he used, and sought to verify knowledge was wiped from such sticks afterwards.
The middleman, generally known as H, was a former Trafigura worker who the court docket final week heard had been, in his personal phrases, referred to as “Mr Non-Compliant” by Trafigura’s former head Claude Dauphin, and had taken on an out of doors position to “do the corporate an enormous service”.
Dauphin died in 2015 and isn’t a celebration to the case.
H was, mentioned the prosecutor, an arms-length “monetary controller” of the scheme who made positive Trafigura’s alleged bribes had been paid by way of the best channel. Wainwright saved in “common and meticulous” contact with him, the court docket heard.
Wainwright and Trafigura’s attorneys have in the meantime argued that the case is constructed on unreliable testimony, and have additionally pointed to the failure to indict or name for the testimony of two of the executives who allegedly ran the scheme, in order that they might face cross-examination.
One was H. The opposite was Trafigura’s former board member Mariano Ferraz, nicknamed “Mr Angola”. Ferraz was chief government of Trafigura’s collectively owned Angolan enterprise, DT Buying and selling.
Ferraz was convicted in Brazil in 2018 in a separate corruption case. Trafigura’s attorneys have argued {that a} secret deal was struck to cut back his sentence in return for incriminating testimony towards Trafigura. Plea offers are unlawful beneath Swiss regulation.
The corporate additionally argues that it had strong compliance mechanisms in place on the time, and will subsequently not be responsible of getting not adequately tried to stop corruption, as prosecutor’s declare.
Former chief monetary officer and present non-executive board member Pierre Lorinet and deputy compliance chief Michael Firth final week testified to the corporate’s dedication to compliance.
Trafigura faces a most penalty of SFr5mn ($5.7mn) if discovered responsible of not having sturdy sufficient controls to cease corruption. Prosecutors have additionally requested for $151mn of income to be forfeited, including that they thought the tremendous was a “drop within the bucket” for Trafigura.
The Angolan official who allegedly obtained the alleged bribes, Paulo Gouveia Junior, can be within the dock, as is without doubt one of the intermediaries who was allegedly utilized by to pay him, Thierry Plojoux, who ran an organization referred to as Consultco.
The three accused, alongside Trafigura, will current their closing defence arguments on Tuesday.
