US District Judge Lorna G Schofield in Manhattan federal court ordered the company to pay $428.5m in fine and $272.2m in criminal forfeiture, improve its ethics and compliance and employ an outside monitor

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US judge punishes Glencore in bribery case. (Credit: Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash)

Swiss mining company Glencore was ordered by a US federal judge to pay $700m as a penalty over its guilty plea related to a decade-long international corruption case.

US District Judge Lorna G Schofield in Manhattan federal court ruled the sentence, which orders the company to pay $428.5m in fine and $272.2m in criminal forfeiture.

In addition, Glencore is required to improve its ethics and compliance programmes in a probation period of five years and employ an outside monitor for three years.

According to the prosecutors, the company paid more than $100m in bribes to government officials in Brazil, Nigeria, Congo, and Venezuela, and has made $315m from the scheme.

In May last year, Glencore pleaded guilty to bribing officials in several foreign countries, violating the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The company accepted its involvement in bribery and corruption in South America and Africa, to manipulate the prices in US fuel-oil markets.

The penalty is part of the $1.5bn that Glencore agreed to pay to resolve bribery and market manipulation lawsuits in the US, the UK, and Brazil.

In addition, the court ordered the company to pay $29.6m to the founders of Crusader Health, a healthcare services company that was forced to shut down.

In September last year, Glencore was convicted in Connecticut to pay $486m in a penalty, after the company admitted conspiring to manipulate oil-price benchmarks.

In November, a UK judge imposed a £276m penalty over the company’s bribing government officials for access to oil cargoes across Africa.