The Department of Justice dropped the hammer on international commodities trading companies who've been greasing the palms of corrupt officials to score big business deals, doling out more than $1.7 billion in fines, forfeitures, and other penalties after a sprawling bribery investigation. According to a Justice Department statement, firms like Sargeant Marine Inc., Vitol Inc., and Glencore International AG admitted their roles in various schemes reaching from Latin America to Africa.
Cleaning up the trade game has been on the agenda since 2017, when the Fraud Section's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) Unit began sifting through the dirt on companies and individuals looking to make an easy dollar through illegal kickbacks which led to six corporate resolutions with companies coughing up admissions of guilt and agreeing to cooperate with ongoing probes, and 20 individuals, including trading company employees and government officials ending up with convictions, the Justice Department went hard on these bad actors with the long arm of the law. Trafigura Beheer B.V., the latest to land in hot water, pleaded guilty to bribing officials in Brazil, and the gavel came down in the Southern District of Florida.
These hefty sanctions are tied to a cast of 19 convicted, now on the hook for leveraging their positions or their connections to line their pockets; this includes six government officials, five employees from the trading companies involved, and eight intermediaries playing the field. Among those is Javier Aguilar, a former Vitol Inc. trader who, after a marathon seven-week trial in the Eastern District of New York, faced the music on FCPA and money laundering charges.
The masterminds behind the crackdown have their due, with acknowledgments passed to the likes of Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri alongside a coalition of U.S. Attorneys and the FBI's International Corruption Unit patching together the efforts that crossed state lines, and country borders these relentless officials and agencies committed to scrubbing clean the grime of corruption from our international marketplaces, pulling back the curtain on an era of high-stakes under-the-table dealings. Additional info on the department's iron-fisted approach to FCPA enforcement is on tap at their website, keeping the public in the loop on how they're keeping the trading world on the straight and narrow.
