As it continues to deal with the fallout of the DoJ probe, the giant trading house has to face mysterious “whistleblowers”, while high-level raiders get ready to swoop in.
The probe opened into Glencore in July 2018 is a vastly complex file but one that Intelligence Online understands the US Department of Justice (DoJ) investigators are determined to see through to the end.
To date, their investigations have only covered the group’s failure to comply with anti-corruption procedures in three countries: Venezuela, Nigeria and Demo-cratic Republic of Congo (DRC). As during the heights of the Ablyazov investigation, a lot of British corporate intelligence firms are on the case.
Other than information already drawn out about the three countries, some stakeholders are trying to push the DoJ to extend the probe to other countries where Glencore could have breached anti-corruption laws, particularly in Kazakhstan. Internal financial documents of the trader were recently leaked on an anony-mous site hosted by the Wix platform, duly presented as the work of a “whistleblower”.
The documents, which Intelligence Online was able to consult, contain
financial statements of KazZinc, Kazakhstan’s former State-owned mining firm, now partly owned by Glencore.
More interestingly, certain documents, including a private investigation report, clearly aim to point those reading the files – journalists and
the DoJ investigators – in the direction of Glencore’s former partner in this country, the oligarch Bulat Utemuratov. The report compares the latter to businessman Dan Gertler, a comparison that is far from accidental. Gertler is Glencore’s DRC’s business partner and it is precisely because Glencore is suspected of ignoring suspicions of corruption regarding Gertler that it is currently under the DoJ laser.
Will the leak, which barely holds water but has proven to be effective in several older cases ( IOL 791), work on the DoJ investigators? The documents are a rehash of arguments characteristically made against Utemuratov and posted on web platforms regularly used to defend the interests of his archenemy Patokh Chodiev
