Rolls-Royce bosses now face bribes charges . . .
Rolls chiefs gave a Silver Spirit car as a bribe Execs paid £30m to Thai middlemen And funded the private jet of Asian boss
ROLLS-ROYCE bosses could face criminal charges after they lavished millions of pounds and gifts on middlemen around the world as it bribed its way into lucrative contracts.
In secret deals, middlemen working for the engineering giant paid senior foreign officials and senior company staff over a period of about 20 years.
Yesterday, details emerged of how the corruption helped the company to around £250m of business in China, Indonesia, Russia and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, officials lined their pockets, with one getting a RollsRoyce Silver Spirit car, another being paid to run a private jet, and others setting up lavish trips abroad.
Rolls-Royce settled the bribery allegations from the UK’s Serious Fraud Office, avoiding prosecution in return for a £497,252,645 payment to the SFO over five years. It has also agreed settlements with the US and Brazilian authorities over similar bribery claims.
But despite the company settling the claims, individuals involved in the case could be charged. It is understood that around 38 RollsRoyce workers, some senior employees, are identified in the corruption cases. Six have been sacked and 11 have left. The company declined to say what level they were.
Judge Sir Brian Leveson at London’s High Court approved the deferred prosecution agreement over an 11-count indictment detailing corruption and failure to prevent bribery offences dating back to 1989.
They included corrupt payments over the sale of Trent aero engines in Indonesia and Thailand and over gas supply equipment in Russia. The group also failed to prevent bribery in its energy business in Nigeria and Indonesia between 2010 and 2013, and in its civil aerospace business in Indonesia, Malaysia and China between 2010 and 2013, the SFO said.
The SFO revealed that in the 1980s and 1990s, senior Rolls employees agreed to pay £1.8m and give a RollsRoyce Silver Spirit car – which is made by a different company to the engine engineer – to a middleman in Indonesia. In return the middleman, believed to have been an agent for the Indonesian president, was expected to vouch for Rolls to supply Trent 700 engines to Indonesia’s national airline.
Rolls paid out £15.7m between 1991 and 1992 to a middleman paying government and Thai Airways employees over engine supply contracts in Thailand. Further payments of £8.4m and £5.8m followed between 1992 and 1997. The company also used middlemen to help it win defence contracts in India in 2008, despite that practice being banned by the Indian government. In Russia, Rolls-Royce paid a middle-man for help securing work to supply equipment for a natural gas project.
In Nigeria, Rolls failed to prevent a local middleman company paying bribes to Nigerian company officials for an advantage on two energy project tenders, the court heard. In Malaysia between July 2011 and November 2013, the firm’s employees provided an Air Asia Group executive with credits worth £1.1m to be used to maintain a private jet in return for him supporting Rolls in airline contracts. Rolls yesterday apologised unreservedly for the conduct, stressing leadership had changed since then.
Rolls-Royce boss Warren East, who took over in July 2015, said: ‘This was unworthy of everything which Rolls-Royce stands for, and that our people, customers, investors and partners expect from us.’