Rolls-Royce bribery scandals

This video from Britain says about itself:

Panorama – How Rolls-Royce Bribed Its Way Around the World

Rolls-Royce has grown dramatically in the past twenty years and has won business in some of the most corrupt countries on the planet. But has some of the company’s spectacular success been built on bribery? Reporter Richard Bilton investigates the secret network of shady middlemen who helped sell Rolls-Royce products overseas, and he uncovers evidence that suggests Britain’s most prestigious company has bribed its way around the world.

First shown: October 31 2016
Duration: 30 minutes BBC

From the BBC:

Rolls-Royce in £671m bribery settlement

16 January 2017

Rolls-Royce has agreed to pay £671m to settle bribery and corruption cases with UK and US authorities.

The aerospace firm is set to pay £497m plus costs to the [British] Serious Fraud Office (SFO), which started investigating claims in 2012 of wrongdoing overseas.

At the time, the SFO asked the firm for information about possible bribery in China, Indonesia and other markets.

Rolls-Royce said it had also agreed to pay $170m (£141m) to the US Department of Justice.

A further settlement would see it pay $26m (£21.5m) to Brazilian regulators, it added.

In Brazil, Rolls-Royce is said to be implicated in the Petrobras corruption scandal.

Rolls-Royce, one of the UK’s biggest manufacturing exporters, makes engines for military and civil planes, as well as for trains, ships, nuclear submarines and power stations. …

It is only the third such agreement that the SFO has struck since they were first introduced into UK law in 2014.

They allow organisations to pay huge penalties, but avoid prosecution, if they freely confess to economic crimes such as fraud or bribery.

From FE Investigate in Britain:

Rolls-Royce has customers in more than 150 countries, comprising more than 400 airlines and leasing customers, 160 armed forces, 4,000 marine customers including 70 navies, and more than 5,000 power and nuclear customers.

The cars division of Rolls-Royce is now owned by BMW.

However, Rolls-Royce cars play a role in the corruption scandals as well:

It has been alleged by former Rolls-Royce employee Dick Taylor that the company had handed a £12.9 million bribe and a blue Rolls-Royce car to Tommy Suharto, the son of Indonesia’s former dictator General Suharto.

British aircraft engineering and FTSE 100 company Rolls-Royce received a 50 percent reduction in the size of the fine they received for protracted and endemic corrupt corporate practices. Rolls-Royce was fined just £671 million (US$787 million) for what Sir Brian Leveson in his judgement described as “truly vast corrupt payments”: here.