Norway’s economic crime unit on Tuesday fined state oil company Statoil $2.9 million for paying a bribe to smooth business relations with Iran. Former director of Statoil’s international division Richard John Hubbard received a $2,900 fine or 20 days in jail. Norway’s economic crime unit on Tuesday fined state oil company Statoil $2.9 million for paying a bribe to smooth business relations with Iran. Former director of Statoil’s international division Richard John Hubbard received a $2,900 fine or 20 days in jail.
The authorities found Statoil guilty of attempted bribery linked to a contract with a London-based consultancy Horton Investments, an alleged front for former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s son Mehdi Hashemi, aNational Iranian Oil Company executive.
Police raided Statoil’s headquarters on September 11 last year following media reports revealing that it had signed a contract in June 2002 with Horton Investments for $15.2 million dollars.
“For preventive reasons, it is necessary to impose a hefty fine,” senior public prosecutor Lars Stoltenberg told a press conference on Tuesday.
Statoil and Hubbard have repeatedly rejected the corruption allegations, and the contract, which was initially due to run for 11 years, was terminated in September 2003, and only after the Norwegian press got wind of the affair.
But according to Stoltenberg, Statoil ought to have terminated the deal as early as July 4 2003, when a new anti-corruption law entered into force in Norway.
By failing to do so, it violated the rules which punish anybody who “confers on or offers another person an improper advantage in return for influencing the performance of a post, office or commission,” Agence France Presse reports.
Norway asked the Islamic Republic six months ago to interrogate Mehdi Hashemi about his association with the London-based company, but has yet to recieve any response, Oslo-based journalist Rahman Saki tells Radio Farda's Shahram Mirian in Cologne.
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