The French electronics firm Safran has been fined 500,000 euros for bribing Nigerian officials in order to win a multi-million euro contract to make identity cards.
A Paris court found SAGAM, a company that merged with SNECMA to form Safran in 2005, paid bribes worth between 22,000 to 38,000 euros to Nigerian officials from 2000 and 2003 to secure a 171 million euro contract.
The court condemned the company for endorsing the payments, but dropped charges against two former SAGAM executives: Jean-Pierre Delarue, then a sales manager in Nigeria, and François Perrachon, the former director for identification systems.
Safran says in a statement it would appeal against the decision.
The case came to light in 2005, when former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo says Sagem paid bribes and presented gifts, including Rolex watches.
The prosecution alleged Sagem sent millions of dollars to high-ranking Nigerian officials including the former Minister of Internal Affairs, Sunday Afolabi.
It is rare for firms to be fined in France for corruption in a foreign country.
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They rush to polute corruption in Nigeria an remain silent about as if they did nothing . They too many to mention , and they made the country what it is today. The Indians , Italians the French and the British . To these nations trading in Nigeria , each one of them have close to 20 % of Nogeria 's oil wealth as economic engine in their homeland . What is too fresh in my mind is how some foreign travel agents in NIgeria bleed hopelessly contributee immensely to economic conditions precipitaing the structural adjustment mayhem that dragged our currency from Naira to pennies with collution from their Nigerian workers around them . The amount of 500,000 Euros imosed on this caught French Firm will do nothing to discourage them.. The only miracle to do so will come from patriotic acts by NIgerian themselves.