Former oil-services sales executive pleads guilty in U.K. to bribery charges

Financial Crimes UK SFO Bribery Anti-Money Laundering

On February 6, the U.K. SFO announced that a former sales executive of an oil-services company had pleaded guilty in the U.K. to 11 counts of bribery regarding payments made in exchange for winning oil-services contracts in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The executive – a British citizen and the former global head of sales for a subsidiary of the company – pleaded guilty to participating in payments of more than $6 million to agents to win contracts worth more than $4 billion in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The SFO’s investigation of the company regarding suspected bribery and money laundering, which was announced in May 2017, is ongoing, but no other officers or employees are currently charged.