Abuja — French engineering firm Technip, which colluded with Halliburton in advancing bribes-for-contracts in the building of Bonny Island based Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) plant, was yesterday convicted by a court in the United States (US). It agreed to a payment of $338 million, in fines, to settle accusations that it engaged in a decade-long scheme to bribe government officials in Nigeria.

The US Justice Department which announced this yesterday also said the Paris-based company conducted the alleged bribery scheme to obtain more than $6 billion in contracts to build liquefied natural gas facilities.

Technip was part of a four-company joint venture that included U.S. firm Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) Inc., and Halliburton. Nigeria awarded four contracts to the venture from 1995 to 2004

Under the settlement, Technip has agreed to pay a $240 million criminal penalty and the Justice Department has filed a deferred prosecution agreement and a criminal information resolving charges of conspiracy and of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The company will pay $98 million to settle a related civil complaint by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Technip authorized the hiring of two agents to pay bribes to Nigerian government officials, according to court papers in the case.

The court papers state that a senior executive of Technip, KBR's former CEO, Albert "Jack" Stanley and others asked executive branch officials of the Nigerian government at critical junctures in the project to designate a representative with whom the joint venture should negotiate the payment of bribes.

The Justice department filed a deferred prosecution agreement and criminal information against Technip in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. The two-count information charges Technip with one count of conspiracy and one count of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

Technip, Kellogg Brown & Root Inc. (KBR), and two other companies were part of a four-company joint venture that was awarded four engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts by Nigeria LNG Ltd. (NLNG) between 1995 and 2004 to build LNG facilities on Bonny Island. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is the largest shareholder of NLNG, owning 49 percent of the company.

According to court documents, Technip authorized the joint venture to hire two agents, Jeffrey Tesler and a Japanese trading company, to pay bribes to a range of Nigerian government officials, including top-level executive branch officials, to assist Technip and the joint venture in obtaining the EPC contracts.

At crucial junctures preceding the award of EPC contracts, a senior executive of Technip, KBR's former CEO, Albert "Jack" Stanley, and others met with successive holders of a top-level office in the executive branch of the Nigerian government to ask the office holders to designate a representative with whom the joint venture should negotiate bribes to Nigerian government officials.

The joint venture paid approximately $132 million to a Gibraltar corporation controlled by Tesler and more than $50 million to the Japanese trading company during the course of the bribery scheme. According to court documents, Technip intended for these payments to be used, in part, for bribes to Nigerian government officials.

Under the terms of the deferred prosecution agreement, the department agreed to defer prosecution of Technip for two years. Technip agreed, among other things, to retain an independent compliance monitor for a two-year period to review the design and implementation of Technip's compliance program and to cooperate with the department in ongoing investigations. If Technip abides by the terms of the deferred prosecution agreement, the department will dismiss the criminal information when the term of the agreement expires.