Dredging group DEME escapes €12.6m confiscation in bribery case
Dredging group DEME escaped a 12.6 million euro confiscation in a major bribery trial on Wednesday after the case was declared inadmissible. The case concerned dredging work at the port of Sabetta in Russia.
The Ghent criminal court declared the case against DEME inadmissible for all defendants on the grounds that the right to a fair trial had been violated. The court ruled that emails which the prosecution claimed were evidence of a 12.6 million euro bribe had been obtained illegally.
Criminal complaint
The case centres on the award of a contract to dredge the port of Sabetta, one of the world's largest LNG terminals, on the Yamal peninsula in northern Russia. The Russian ministry of transport had awarded the project to the Russian company USK Most. Two Belgian dredging companies, DEME and Jan De Nul, tendered for the dredging subcontract in 2013.
DEME won the contract through its Russian joint venture Mordraga, but De Nul suspected a conflict of interest with an intermediary. Following a criminal complaint by Jan De Nul, the East Flanders public prosecutor's office launched an investigation in 2016.
Former employee
Search warrants issued by the FBI, which was called in 2018 to examine the email addresses of suspects, revealed the bribery affair. According to the court, the central figure was a former DEME employee who sat on the committee that decided on the award of the subcontract.
The former employee, Sofia M.-N., founded her own consulting company in 2012 and was officially paid 175,000 euros as a consultant by DEME. However, the investigation revealed that the woman also allegedly received 4,188,000 euros in bribes through screen companies in Cyprus and Panama linked to DEME.
#FlandersNewsService | © BELGA PHOTO KURT DESPLENTER
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