Commodities, sovereign funds and football: the international cases

Trafigura and the Angolan oil contracts

The Trafigura judgment of 31 January 2025 described at the beginning of this chapter was the culmination of a series of foreign bribery cases involving commodity traders. The Criminal Chamber found that between 2009 and 2011 payments and gifts of more than USD 5 million had been made to a senior employee of the Angolan state oil company in order to obtain contracts for the supply of oil products.¹ It convicted the former official of passive bribery of a foreign public official and sentenced him to 36 months' imprisonment, of which 14 months unconditional. The intermediary, the owner of the company through which the payments were made, received a suspended sentence of 24 months. The former senior manager of the group, whom the press identified as its former chief operating officer, was sentenced to 32 months, of which 12 months unconditional. The Dutch parent company was convicted under Article 102 SCC in conjunction with Article 322septies SCC, fined CHF 3 million and ordered to pay a compensatory claim of USD 145 million. A compensatory claim of EUR 480,000 and USD 710,000 was imposed on the former official.²

The judgment was not final. The lawyer of the former manager announced an appeal, which suspended the prison sentence. The company's counsel described the judgment as a first step in a long judicial process.³ Its significance for the trading industry lies in the reasoning on corporate organization. The court found that the group lacked adequate systems to prevent corruption in its relations with intermediaries. Press reports described the use of a USB stick to exchange information with an intermediary in order to conceal the payments.⁴ For the trading houses of Lugano described in Chapter F.I, which are smaller than Trafigura but active in similar markets, the judgment confirms that the use of agents and intermediaries in countries with a high corruption risk is the area in which a Swiss court will look first when it examines whether an organization was adequate.

Gunvor and the Republic of the Congo

A month later, on 20 February 2025, the Criminal Chamber convicted a former employee of the Geneva commodity trader Gunvor of bribing foreign public officials in the Republic of the Congo. The court found that he had participated knowingly, as co-perpetrator in a leading position, in payments of more than USD 35 million made between June 2010 and December 2011 to obtain crude oil contracts from a Congolese state enterprise, and in an attempted bribery in the spring of 2014. It imposed a suspended sentence of 24 months and ordered the forfeiture, by way of a compensatory claim, of a severance premium of USD 950,000. The company itself had been convicted by a penalty order of the OAG of 14 October 2019 for failing to take the organizational measures required to prevent the bribery. The judgment against the former employee was not final.⁵

The two judgments of early 2025 complete a pattern. The OAG first concludes the case against the company, often by penalty order, and then brings the individuals to trial in Bellinzona, where the evidence about the organization is tested in public. For individual traders and compliance officers the risk is therefore personal. The fact that the employer has accepted a penalty order does not protect them. Documents produced in the corporate proceedings may become evidence in their own trial.

Notes

1. "Trafigura and ex-COO convicted of bribery by Swiss court", SWI swissinfo.ch, 31 January 2025 (above); Public Eye, press release of 31 January 2025 (above) (period 2009–2011). ↩
2. Federal Criminal Court, press release on SK.2023.49 (above). ↩
3. The Edge Malaysia (Reuters), 31 January 2025 (above). ↩
4. SWI swissinfo.ch, 31 January 2025 (above). ↩
5. Federal Criminal Court, press release on SK.2023.40 (above). ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.