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Convictions in International Corruption Case
Wednesday, 01 February 2012
Mukul Chawla QC (instructed by Paul Brinkworth of the Serious Fraud Office) has just concluded the prosecution of five defendants who were charged with conspiring corruptly to obtain payments from bidders to Oil and Gas projects. The value of the projects was some £70 million. The defendants (some of whom were acting as buyers for the projects for procurement companies) supplied confidential, price sensitive information to bidders from whom they then charged success fees.
This was an enormous investigation commencing in April 2008 and involved the analysis of a vast quantity of email correspondence and telephone records spanning an eight year period. The trial commenced in October 2011 at Southwark Crown Court.
At the conclusion of the trial, four of the defendants (Andrew Rybak, Ronald Saunders, Philip Hammond and Barry Smith) were convicted. The Jury were unable to reach a decision in relation to a fifth defendant in respect of the one charge that he faced and the decision was made not to proceed to a re-trial against him.
The convicted defendants were sentenced to terms of imprisonment (suspended and with a requirement to perform 300 hours of unpaid work in the case of Barry Smith) on the 31st January 2011. Confiscation proceedings are to follow.
Further details can be found at:
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/law/article3298543.ece
http://www.sfo.gov.uk/press-room/latest-press-releases/press-releases-2012/prison-terms-for-corruption-in-oil-and-gas-contracts.aspx
http://www.sfo.gov.uk/press-room/latest-press-releases/press-releases-2012/four-guilty-in-70-million-contracts-corruption-case.aspx
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