French bank Société Générale agreed to pay $1.34 billion to settle U.S. charges that it bribed Libyan officials and rigged the Libor interest-rate benchmark, the Justice Department announced on Monday, June 4, 2018.
The largest portion, $585 million, went to U.S. and French authorities over claims that the bank bribed a broker at Libya’s sovereign wealth fund. Prosecutors said the bank handed over $90 million in bribes across five years, through 2009, to win $3.66 billion in business from the government of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, taking $523 million in profit from 14 investments.
In a separate agreement, the bank accepted $750 million in fines and restitution payable to the Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over its role in manipulating Libor in 2011.
“For years, Societe Generale undermined the integrity of global markets and foreign institutions by issuing false financial data and by fraudulently securing contracts through bribery,” Acting U.S. Assistant Attorney General John Cronan said.
French prosecutors had said the bank would pay 250 million euros to France and the same amount to the United States to avoid corruption trials on either side of the Atlantic. The Libyan Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, had accused the bank of routing at least $58 million in bribes through Leinada, a Panama-registered firm run by an associate of Gaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam.
The settlement followed the March departure of Société Générale deputy CEO Didier Valet over the handling of the U.S. dispute. The bank said it had already set aside reserves for the cost and that the payments would have no impact on its results.
Sources
- SocGen to pay $1.34 bn for Libya bribes, Libor manipulation
- Société Générale pays $1.3B to settle Libya bribery, Libor probes
