A British subsidiary of French industrial group Alstom paid €3.3 million in bribes disguised as payments for consultancy agreements to secure infrastructure contracts relating to the Delhi Metro, Britain’s Serious Fraud Office alleged in requisition papers released following a hearing in London on Tuesday.
According to the charge-sheet, Alstom Network UK Ltd, a division of Alstom, and its directors “corruptly” paid ₹19,895,000 in 2001 to a company called Indo European Ventures Pte Ltd, disguised as payments relating to a Consultancy Agreement, and paid €3.13 million to Global King Technology Ltd in May 2002, under a similar guise.
These were meant to be “inducements or rewards for showing favour to the Alstom Group in relation to the award or performance of a contract with the…Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Ltd for a Train Control, Signaling and Telecommunication System” for Phase-1 of the Metro,” according to the requisition document.
Charges were also brought against the company relating to contracts on tram systems in Warsaw, Poland and Tunis, Tunisia. In total, six charges have been brought against the subsidiary relating to alleged corrupt practices between June 1, 2000, and November 30, 2006, with alleged payments totalled €6.6 million. Delhi-related payments constitute over half.
The charges were made public following the hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court in London. The next hearing is set to take place on October 6, though the case is unlikely to go to trial until next year. The charges follow a four-year investigation — code-named Operation Ruthenium — by the Serious Fraud Office into suspected corruption involved in overseas contracts.
In 2010, the SFO arrested three UK-based members of the Alstom Board on suspicion of bribery, corruption, money laundering and false accounting, though no charges have been filed.
The investigation into Alstom subsidiaries has spanned several countries across the world, with the US Department of Justice taking an active role.
In July, a former senior executive of a US subsidiary of Alstom pleaded guilty to participating in a scheme to pay bribes relating to the awarding of a power project in Indonesia. The SFO itself began the investigation following information provided by Switzerland’s Office of the Attorney General.