Business - United Kingdom -
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convictions
Caroline Binham, Legal Correspondent
The UK’s top anti-corruption body has secured its first conviction against a corporation for bribing foreign officials. A jury found Smith & Ouzman, a printing company, guilty of making £400,000 of corrupt payments to secure contracts in Africa.
Eastbourne-based Smith & Ouzman, along with two directors, were found guilty at Southwark crown court on Monday of bribing agents in Kenya and Mauritania at the end of a trial brought by the Serious Fraud Office after a three-year investigation. The company makes official security documents such as ballot papers and certificates.
Christopher Smith, 71, the company’s chairman, and Nicholas Smith, 43, a sales and marketing director, were respectively convicted on two and three counts of agreeing to corrupt payments, the SFO said.
“This is the SFO’s first conviction of a corporate for offences involving bribery of foreign public officials,” said David Green, the agency’s director. “Such criminality, whether involving companies large or small, severely damages the UK’s commercial reputation and feeds corrupt governance in the developing world. We are very grateful to the Kenyan authorities for their assistance in this case.”
The successful prosecution will be a boon to the agency, whose future was once again put in doubt after plans were revived by the home secretary, Theresa May, to roll the SFO into a wider crime-fighting body under her remit.
The defendants, including the company, will be sentenced in February. The company said it had “been a difficult four years” and that it was “not appropriate” to comment further because sentencing was pending.
Two defendants were acquitted by the jury in the case: Timothy Forrester, a Smith & Ouzman sales and marketing director who was accused of three counts of agreeing to make corrupt payments; and Abdirahman Omar, a sales agent used by the company, who was accused of making payments in relation to a contract in Somaliland.
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