US prosecutors have charged six former executives of a valve company based in California with bribing officials at overseas energy firms, including an oil equipment company in Abu Dhabi which is owned by the government. Federal prosecutors said executives at Control Components paid a total of US$4.9 million (Dh17.9m) in bribes to officials at foreign firms to convince them to buy their equipment. US law bars the nation's businesses from bribing officials at home or overseas.
Prosecutors alleged that officials at the National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC), an oil equipment firm that is majority-owned by the Abu Dhabi Government's General Holding Corporation, received bribes from Control Components from 1998 to 2007. Abdou Assad, the legal adviser at NPCC, said today the company was unaware of the indictment and rejected the prosecutors' claims. "This is a false accusation against NPCC," he said. "NPCC has a code of conducts, and everybody in NPCC is obliged by management to know it. All our suppliers know about it."
The indictment follows guilty pleas earlier this year by two former executives of the valve firm, one admitting to paying bribes to people at two other Abu Dhabi energy firms. Prosecutors did not specify how much money was alleged to have been received by NPCC officials from the defendants, but they noted that Control Components officials made "approximately 236 corrupt payments in more than 30 countries, which resulted in net profits to the valve company of approximately $46.5 million".
The accused Control Components executives include Stuart Carson, the former chief executive, and five other top officials. Other state-owned companies said to have received bribes include China Offshore Oil Corporation, Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power and Petronas, the Malaysian oil company. The indictment is the prosecutors' latest move against Control Components after negotiating guilty pleas from two lower-level executives earlier this year.
In January, Mario Covino, the former director of worldwide factory sales at the firm, pleaded guilty to bribing officials at companies that included Dolphin Energy and the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (ADCO), a unit of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Dolphin said in a statement it was aware of the case and had tightened its procurement policy since the period when Covino said the bribes took place.
"The Department of Justice press release and associated court action relates to the supply of industrial valves during the period 2003-2007," Dolphin said. "During the period, all procurement for the Dolphin Project was handled by contractors, appointed for the purpose. Subsequently, orders and spares were obtained following strict procedures." Dolphin said that in an initial review "no non-compliances were detected against company procedures", but the company had taken legal advice and "is in the process of conducting an independent investigation".
Covino admitted to conspiring to disburse about $1m in bribes, dubbed "flowers" by officials at the firm, according to court records. Abdulmunim al Kindy, the general manager at ADCO, said his company bought about $40,000 worth of equipment directly from Control Components, and "all work was competitively awarded". In addition, ADCO bought valves from the company on two separate occasions through an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor, he said.
"In the EPC package that goes out to the bidders, we specify acceptable brands of equipment [about 15 manufacturers in the case of valves], to give the EPC contractor the flexibility to obtain the best commercial offers from the market," he said in an e-mail. "We trust that all our EPC contractors share the same values as we do, and have controls in place to ensure the highest ethical conduct." Mr al Kindy said he did not yet have enough information to comment directly on the bribery charge but said ADCO maintained a strict ethics policy that prohibited employees from engaging in any "commercial dealing".
"ADCO deals severely with all violations to this policy," he said. A second Control Components executive pleaded guilty in February to a charge of conspiring to bribe foreign officials. Richard Morlok, the former finance director, directed payments of about $628,000 to officials at a group of foreign firms that included several Chinese power companies and the Saudi Arabian Fertiliser Company (SAFCO), the plea agreement said.
No UAE firms were named in Morlok's plea agreement. cstanton@thenational.ae