Page 10 - AfrOil Week 47 2021

AfrOil POLICY AfrOil

According to the Office of the Attorney Gen- United States in 2014 and in 2017, respectively,
eral of Switzerland (OAG), as a result of “mul- Upstream reported.
tiple and serious deficiencies” in their internal In a related case, in July 2020, a Swiss court
organisation, its Swiss subsidiaries failed to convicted former SBM Offshore and SBM Hold-
prevent the bribery, which occurred between ing executive Didier Keller of bribing foreign
2006 and the start of 2012, Upstream reported public officials in Angola. ™
on November 23.
The three subsidiaries – SBM Holding, Single
Buoy Moorings and SBM Production Contrac-
tors – together form the financial operations
centre of the SBM Offshore group, the OAG said
in a “summary penalty order”.
According to the OAG’s investigation,
bribes totalling more than $22mn and close to
€1mn ($1.56mn) were paid to public officials
in Angola, Equatorial Guinea and, to a lesser
extent, Nigeria.
However, the OAG said it was not possible to
order compensatory claims in connection with
the bribes paid in Angola and Equatorial Guinea
because the related profits were already included
in the amounts SBM Offshore paid within set-
tlements reached in the Netherlands and the SBM Offshore reportedly paid more than $22mn in bribes (Image: SBM Offshore)

Questions emerge over spending

on Namibian fuel storage facility

NAMIBIA THE Namibian government has announced firefighting capacities. This came after Namib-
that it plans to spend an additional NAD87mn, ians began expressing outraged at the price tag
equivalent to around $5.5mn, on the National of the facility.
Oil-Storage Facility (NOSF), a petroleum prod- NOSF, owned by Namibia’s national oil com-
uct depot in Walvis Bay. pany (NOC) NAMCOR), is capable of storing
This comes on top of a hefty bill of NAD6.5bn 75mn litres of petroleum products. It consists of
that taxpayers have already had to fund over the seven storage tanks. ™
past five years. These outlays have been the sub-
ject of much discontent in the country.
The latest details on the project emerged in a
report released last week by the Central Procure-
ment Board (CPB). The document provides an
overview of the status of state tenders, challenges
faced and progress made since last year.
The report provided a list of government
tenders in the past year, and the extensions for
the fuel storage facility emerged as a concerning
expense.
The controversial project has been a point
of contention in Namibia for almost five years,
with allegations of corruption and negligence
by senior government officials surrounding it.
Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila, the country’s
current prime minister, drove the project when
she was still finance minister.
The report did not specify what the
NAD87mn will be used for.
The national newspaper, The Namibian, had
reported in 2018 that the government was set to
splash out another NAD50mn on NOSF after
complaints emerged that it had substandard NOSF’s seven storage tanks can hold 75mn litres of fuel (Photo: NAMCOR)

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