N34bn ID card scam: French court fines coy for bribing Nigerian officials

ON SEPTEMBER 6, 2012 • IN NEWS
2:57 am

By MICHAEL EBOH, WITH AGENCY REPORT

A French firm, Safran, has been fined about N100 million (500,000 euros) by a court in Paris for bribing public officials in Nigeria to secure the N33.5 billion contract for the printing of more than 70 million identity cards between 2000 and 2003.

Safran, a French aeronautics and defence group, was found guilty by the investigating magistrates, of giving bribes to Nigerian officials that helped it win the contract.
The company is partly owned by France,which owns a 30 per cent stake.

The court found that SAGEM (Société d’Applications Générales de l’Électricité et de la Mécanique, translated to mean Company of General Applications of Electricity and Mechanics, a company that merged with SNECMA to form Safran in 2005, paid bribes worth between N4.8 million ($30,000) to N80 million ($500,000) to Nigerian officials between 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 SAGEM executives: Jean-Pierre Delarue, then a sales manager in Nigeria, and François Perrachon, the former director for identification systems.
Prosecutors had sought a suspended sentence of up to 18 months and fines of 15,000 euros each for the two officials.

The prosecution alleged that Sagem paid millions of dollars as bribes to high-ranking Nigerian officials including the former Minister of Internal Affairs, late Chief Sunday Afolabi.

The link:

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/09/n34bn-id-card-scam-french-court-fines-coy-for-bribing-nigerian-officials/