In what was the first time that the Federal Criminal Court of the Swiss Confederation, based in Bellinzona, was called upon to judge the criminal liability of a Swiss company for bribery of foreign public officials, the three judges, in the sentence handed down this Friday and to which Lusa had access, found that bribery had been practiced by Trafigura in Angola, sentencing all defendants, including the former chairman of the executive committee of Sonangol Distribuidora (a subsidiary of the Sociedade Nacional de Combustíveis de Angola - Sonangol), Paulo Gouveia Júnior, to prison terms.
The Swiss company, a global giant in the trade of raw materials, will have to hand over to the authorities the profits illegally obtained through this alleged corruption scheme, more than 145 million dollars (140 million euros), equivalent to 2 percent of its total profits in 2023, in addition to a fine.
Paulo Gouveia Júnior, accused by Swiss prosecutors of having received nearly five million dollars (4.8 million euros) in bribes, in exchange for approving eight ship charter contracts and a supply contract for Trafigura, which would have yielded the Swiss company around 145 million dollars in profit, was sentenced for passive bribery of foreign public officials to a 36-month prison sentence, partially suspended: he must serve 14 months in prison, with the remaining 22 months suspended for a period of two years.
The then chairman of the executive committee of Sonangol Distribuidora, who has dual Angolan and Portuguese nationality, was also ordered to pay more than one million euros in compensation, in addition to having a substantial part of the amounts he held in a bank account opened for him in Switzerland confiscated.
Also in the dock were Trafigura's former chief operating officer, British Mike Wainwright – who retired in early 2024 – for bribery of foreign public officials, an intermediary who is believed to have made the payments, Thierry Guillaume Plojoux, a Swiss national resident in the United Arab Emirates, and the company Trafigura itself, whose founder, Claude Dauphin, a prominent figure in the global trade of raw materials for decades, who died of cancer in 2015, is believed to have been the 'architect' of the corruption scheme, according to prosecutors.
Wainwright and Plojoux were found guilty of bribery of foreign public officials and sentenced to 32 and 24 months in prison respectively, with the former having to serve 12 months in prison (with the remaining 20 months suspended for a period of two years), while the latter had his entire sentence suspended for two years.
Trafigura Beheer BV, the former parent company of the Trafigura group of commodities traders, was also found guilty of organisational failures that allowed illicit activities to take place, and ordered to pay compensation of more than 145 million dollars to the Swiss Confederation for the profits made from the bribery scheme, in addition to a fine of more than 3 million dollars (2.9 million euros).
According to the indictment, some of Trafigura's most senior executives were closely involved in this criminal conspiracy to win lucrative government contracts in Angola by bribing a public official between 2009 and 2011 through 16 deposits totalling 4.3 million euros into bank accounts in Geneva opened in the name of Paulo Gouveia Júnior, while 604,000 dollars (582,000 euros) in cash was delivered to him in Angola.
The indictment recalls that Paulo Gouveia Júnior held, between 24 July 2008 and 22 July 2010, the positions of chairman of the executive committee and executive member of the board of directors of Sonangol Distribuidora SA – earning a salary of between 10 thousand and 12 thousand dollars per month (9.6 thousand and 11.6 thousand euros) – and, subsequently, from 22 July 2010 to 5 October 2012, the chairman of the executive committee and executive member of the board of directors of Sonagas, Sonangol Gás, both subsidiaries of Sonangol.
