The Serious Fraud Office has been given special funding to pursue its criminal investigation into a firm that has been implicated in an international bribery scandal.
The Treasury has awarded the extra money for the agency’s inquiry into a Monaco-based firm, Unaoil, which is accused of corruptly securing contracts for dozens of multinationals.
Unaoil was hired to work in various parts of the world by the British company Rolls-Royce plc, which is also under investigation by the SFO. The further expansion of the SFO inquiry comes four years after it first started looking at Rolls-Royce. A Guardian/BBC investigation published on Monday revealed how extensive it has become.
On Monday night one of Unaoil’s former employees admitted to bribing a Libyan government official in an interview with the BBC’s Panorama programme.
The whistleblower, Lindsay Mitchell, said that in 2009 he handed an envelope filled with US dollars to a manager at a subsidiary of the state-owned Libyan National Oil Company. According to Mitchell, the man had made clear he could help Unaoil’s clients obtain a contract from the Libyan government.
Mitchell’s interview marks the first time a former Unaoil insider has gone on the record to allege misconduct at the firm. He is reportedly cooperating with law enforcement, and has said he would be willing to testify against his former employer.
The SFO’s investigation into Unaoil began this year after a leak of thousands of the firm’s emails to journalists at Australia’s Fairfax Media. Authorities in the UK, US and Australia are understood to be investigating the firm following a raid in March of the company’s headquarters by police in Monaco.
Unaoil has denied that it has been involved in bribery, adding that it intends to sue journalists over the “malicious and damaging allegations”. The company also said some of the information that formed the basis of the allegations against it “has been gathered as a result of criminal activity including extortion”.
The award of the special financing by the Treasury – known in official jargon as “blockbuster funding” – has previously been granted for a small number of major SFO investigations. These include the rigging of the Libor interest rate, a Kazakh mining company accused of corruption, and the Rolls-Royce inquiry.
The amount of money awarded to the SFO for its Unaoil inquiry is not known. However, the award indicates that the inquiry is now one of its largest investigations. For four years, the SFO has been investigating allegations that Rolls-Royce hired middlemen to land contracts around the world. Rolls-Royce said it was fully cooperating with this and other official investigations and could not comment further.
The Guardian/BBC investigation identified 12 countries where Rolls-Royce used commercial advisers or middlemen to obtain contracts. The company hired Unaoil in five countries, according to documents leaked to Fairfax Media.
In an interview with BBC Panorama, Mitchell described depositing an envelope filled with cash at the Libyan official’s house late one evening. “I made the payment at the gentleman’s house at 11 o’clock at night, dropped it off,” he said. “I just dropped it off and said: ‘Here’s your gift.’” The two men then had coffee at the official’s house.
