According to Swiss prosecutors, Trafigura Beheer BV, the former parent company of the Trafigura group, a commodity trading company, paid around 4.7 million Swiss francs in bribes to the then chairman of the executive committee of Sonangol Distribuidora (a subsidiary of the Sociedade Nacional de Combustíveis de Angola - Sonangol), Paulo Gouveia Júnior, who, in return, approved eight ship charter contracts and one supply contract, which are said to have yielded the Swiss company approximately 144 million dollars in profit.
In the dock will be Paulo Gouveia Júnior, who has dual Angolan and Portuguese nationality, accused of passive corruption, the former director of operations of Trafigura, the British Mike Wainwright – who retired at the beginning of this year –, for active corruption of foreign public officials, an intermediary who is believed to have made the payments, Thierry Guillaume Plojoux, a Swiss national and resident in the United Arab Emirates, as well as the company Trafigura itself, whose founder, Claude Dauphin, a prominent figure in the global trade of raw materials for decades, and who died of cancer in 2015, is believed to have been the ‘architect’ of the corruption scheme, according to prosecutors.
This case dates back to last year, with the office of the Swiss Attorney General having filed an indictment at the Swiss Federal Criminal Court on 5 December 2023 against Trafigura and “three individuals”, but, as is customary in Swiss legal proceedings, the details of the indictment were concealed and only revealed now, on the eve of the start of the trial.
This is the first time that the Federal Criminal Court, based in Bellinzona, has been called upon to judge the criminal liability of a company for bribery of foreign public officials.
According to the indictment, a 150-page document to which Lusa had access, 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 in bank accounts in Geneva, opened in the name of Paulo Gouveia Júnior, while 604 thousand dollars in cash were delivered to him in Angola.
According to the indictment, Mike Wainwright was personally involved in the bribery scheme, having signed some of the documents involved in the transactions, something that he himself and his defence lawyers deny.
Regarding Paulo Gouveia Júnior, the prosecution recalls that he held the positions of chairman of the executive committee and executive member of the board of directors of Sonangol Distribuidora SA between 24 July 2008 and 22 July 2010 – earning a salary of between 10 thousand and 12 thousand dollars per month – and, subsequently, from 22 July 2010 to 5 October 2012, chairman of the executive committee, and also executive member of the board of directors of Sonagas, Sonangol Gás, both subsidiaries of Sonangol.
If found guilty at the end of the trial that will now begin in Bellinzona, the Swiss company will have to hand over to the authorities the income obtained through this alleged corruption scheme, close to 150 million dollars, equivalent to 2 percent of its total profits in 2023.
