The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has launched an investigation into Deloitte's audits of Glencore and its subsidiary Glencore Energy UK, covering financial years from 2013 to 2020. The regulator said it would examine whether the accounting firm gave sufficient consideration to the risk of non-compliance with laws and regulations during those audits.
The probe follows a major bribery case in which Glencore was ordered to pay £281m in fines, confiscated profits and costs in 2022. The company had pleaded guilty to seven counts of bribery brought by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), in what was then the largest payment imposed on a company in a UK court.
Court proceedings heard that Glencore employees and agents paid bribes worth $27m (£20m) to unnamed officials in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan. The SFO said employees had flown cash bribes to Africa in private jets and used sham documents to conceal the true purpose of the payments.
The FRC announced the investigation on Wednesday, saying its enforcement division would conduct the review. The decision to open the probe was made at a meeting of the regulator's conduct committee in March, but had not been previously disclosed.
The SFO began a sweeping investigation into Glencore in 2019 under the codename Operation Azoth. Six former Glencore employees have been charged over allegations of bribery linked to the company's oil trading division in Africa.
