A Swiss court document has revealed the first details of allegedly corrupt payments made by Trafigura in Angola to secure favourable ship charters.
The trading and shipowning giant is accused of not taking reasonable and necessary organisational measures to prevent unlawful payments to a former employee of state energy company Sonangol.
The charges related to Trafigura Beheer, the former parent of Trafigura Group, in the period from 2009 to 2011.
A 150-page indictment released on Monday and cited by Bloomberg, details accusations by Swiss prosecutors of bribes being channelled to an Angolan official through a network of former employees, including one allegedly nicknamed “Mr Non-Compliant” by the trader’s late founder, Claude Dauphin.
The three-week trial at Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court begins on 2 December.
Trafigura Beheer and former chief operating officer Mike Wainwright were charged in December.
A former Sonangol Distribuidora chief executive is alleged to have pocketed more than $5m in return for preferential vessel chartering and bunkering deals, according to the Office of the Attorney General.
The CEO has now been named as Paulo Gouveia Jr. He has also been charged, along with a Swiss middleman named only as P.
The document gives details of payment methods and reveals the first claims that Dauphin was a central participant.
Trafigura faces a maximum fine of CHF 5m ($5.7m), plus repayment of the alleged profit of more than $140m.
The prosecution said cash was transferred to Gouveia through a Geneva bank.
Ex-employee ‘controlled’ payments
Funds came at first from Enelmer International, set up by Trafigura’s Mariano Ferraz.
Ferraz was found guilty on corruption charges in Brazil in 2018 and testified to prosecutors as part of a plea agreement.
Later payments were made by Consultco Trading, a British Virgin Islands-registered company with an address in Dubai, run by the former Trafigura executive known as P.
Another former Trafigura staffer was made the “controller” of the money flowing through Consultco, according to the indictment.
He had worked at Trafigura from 1997 to 2007. This is the man said to be nicknamed “Mr Non-Compliant”.
Gouveia signed multi-year chartering contracts for eight ships, as well as a bunkering deal, that earned the trader $143.7m in profit, prosecutors allege.
Signature on letter
The document alleges Wainwright’s signature was on the letter recommending that a Swiss bank set up an account for Gouveia.
Three payments made from Trafigura through Enelmer to Gouveia’s company were initialled “MW” in Trafigura’s internal documents, the indictment stated.
And it alleged that Wainwright ordered “Mr Non-Compliant” to make the first two payments totalling $1m from Consultco to Gouveia.
Wainwright has been a major Trafigura shareholder.
He was part of a trio of senior bosses who stepped up to run the group when Dauphin died in 2015.
Wainwright retired in March. He rejects the charges against him.
Trafigura said in a statement on Tuesday that its parent’s anti-bribery and anti-corruption controls and compliance programme have been externally reviewed, and assessed to have met legal requirements and international good practice standards applicable at that time.
“Trafigura has invested significant resources in continuously strengthening its compliance programme over a number of years,” the company added.
“This includes mandatory training for all staff, progressively strengthening compliance teams and controls, and the decision to prohibit the use of third parties for business origination with effect from 2019.”
The group reiterated that it does not tolerate any breach or circumvention of its compliance controls or code of conduct.
Jean-Louis Scenini, a lawyer for Gouveia, told TradeWinds he had no comment at this stage.
“We will respond to the public prosecutor’s accusations in the course of the forthcoming proceedings before the Federal Criminal Court,” he added.
Dauphin’s family told Bloomberg that Trafigura was using him as a “scapegoat”.
