Mining and commodities trader Glencore (LON: GLEN) is facing a criminal investigation in its home country for failing to have organizational measures in place to prevent alleged corruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).<\/p>\n
The probe by the Swiss Attorney General, announced after market close on Friday<\/a>, adds to the list of multiple, but separate\u00a0alleged\u00a0corruption<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0bribery investigations<\/a>\u00a0targeting the miner.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Swiss Federal Prosecutor\u2019s office said the move was the result of a wide-ranging investigation by law enforcement agencies opened in May. They are looking into the activities of commodity traders based in the country and Glencore is the first company to be specifically targeted as a result of the process.<\/p>\n The Swiss probe is likely to increase pressure on chief executive officer\u00a0Ivan Glasenberg. He\u00a0told investors in February<\/a>\u00a0to prepare for more leadership changes and hinted that his own departure may come sooner than previously anticipated.<\/p>\n A month later, Glencore said it had found certain facts that \u201cmay be relevant\u201d to the probes it\u2019s facing, adding it had shared them with regulators.<\/p>\n BMO Metals and Mining analyst, Edward Sterck, believes the Swiss probe does not change Glencore’s reputational risk profile. \u201cIn our opinion, [it] just increases the potential fine in the event Glencore is found guilty,\u201d he said in a note to investors.<\/p>\n Sterck noted the additional financial risk was \u201crelatively low\u201d compared to fines handed out previously by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to other companies.<\/p>\n More ongoing investigations in the UK, the US and Brazil, have scared investors and shaken the company over the past two years.<\/p>\n The SOJ launched its investigation into Glencore\u2019s activities in Congo, Nigeria and Venezuela in July 2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) initiated a probe in April last year, looking at whether Glencore had fallen foul of certain provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act and engaged in \u201ccorrupt practices in connection with commodities\u201d.<\/p>\n Just before 2019 was over, the SFO opened its own bribery probe<\/a> into the mining company and some of its executives, as well as employees and agents.<\/p>\n Glencore is a leading miner and the biggest western company operating in DRC, Africa\u2019s largest copper producer and the source of more than half the world\u2019s cobalt.<\/p>\n The firm is just one of a few top resource companies facing probes into possible corruption and bribery. Rio Tinto (ASX, LON: RIO) is also under investigation by the DOJ and the SFO<\/a> over a questionable $10.5 million payment<\/a> it made to a French consultant. That person helped the company win the rights to the giant Simandou iron ore deposit in Guinea.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Switzerland has opened a criminal investigation into Glencore’s possible failure to prevent alleged corruption in the DRC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[949,369,2640],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191449"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1191449"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1191501,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191449\/revisions\/1191501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1191449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1191449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1191449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}