CEO of pipe-making giant Tenaris is indicted
The Argentine judge overseeing an investigation into the socalled notebook scandal has indicted billionaire Paolo Rocca as part of a graft case. Shares of steel pipe maker Tenaris, in which he is the majority shareholder, plunged in Italy.
The judge set a $103 million bond and forbade Rocca, Tenaris’ chairman and CEO, from leaving the country. Shares of Tenaris dropped Wednesday as much as 9.3 percent in Milan, its lowest price since April 2016. They fell as much as 11 percent in New York Tuesday. Rocca, whose net worth is estimated at $8 billion at Bloomberg Billionaire’s index, lost more than $100 million in Tuesday’s stock drop.
Tenaris has its North American headquarters in Houston, including a $1.8 billion pipe mill southwest of Houston in Bay City that opened about a year ago.
Over the summer, Tenaris also restarted its pipe treatment and manufacturing facility in Conroe. That plant had been mothballed during the most recent oil bust. Tenaris makes pipes that go into oil and gas wells.
In an interview in March, Rocca said he was planning more Texas growth in the Houston area and near the booming Permian Basin in West Texas.
Tenaris was virtually unheard of in Texas until just over a decade ago, when it bought St. Louisbased Maverick Tube Corp. and Houston-based Hydril Co. for a combined $5 billion. In short order, Tenaris grew from about 50 Houston employees to more than 2,000.
The ruling, which was reported earlier by Argentina’s Clarin
newspaper, was confirmed by a clerk at judge Claudio Bonadio’s court who asked not be identified because the investigation is ongoing. Tenaris spokeswoman Stefania Argento said in a telephone interview that she had no immediate comment. Trading of steelmaker Ternium, which is also majority-owned by Rocca, was halted in the New York Stock Exchange.
Tenaris’ board has been monitoring the situation in consultation with its legal advisers and, after a review of the judge’s decision, is supporting Rocca as chairman and CEO, it said in a statement.
The judge charged Rocca after the Argentine billionaire testified that one of his company’s executives paid an undisclosed amount of cash to government officials in monthly installments from 2009 to 2012. The officials were allegedly working for then-President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s administration to speed up a compensation payment from Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez for the nationalization of Sidor, a unit that had been seized by Venezuela. Rocca’s group was compensated with nearly $2 billion for the unit.
The move comes as Bonadio probes hundreds of alleged bribes paid by construction companies, energy suppliers and electricity generators to members of the former government. The case, known as the “notebook scandal” after a series of notebooks belonging to a driver for the former deputy secretary for planning, who kept records of names, amounts, addresses and dates of alleged bribes paid between 2005 and 2015.
Bonadio also ruled he had no evidence to file charges against Pampa Energia chairman and majority owner Marcelo Mindlin. Spokesman Jorge Azcarate didn’t reply to messages seeking comment.