UK defence firm Ultra Electronics to pay £15m after SFO bribery investigation

The British defence company Ultra Electronics has accepted responsibility for a failure to prevent bribery and agreed to pay £15m after an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office . The penalties are part of a deferred prosecution approved by the high court on Friday, after an investigation opened in 2018 when the company referred itself to the UK law enforcement agency a month after corruption allegations were published by Algerian media. Ultra agreed to pay a £10m penalty and £4.8m to cover the SFO investigation costs after it admitted failing to prevent bribery in connection with three public sector contracts in Algeria and Oman sought through the use of agents. Graham McNulty, the interim director of the SFO, said: “Bribery undermines that trust and corrodes the systems on which society relies. Today’s outcome underlines the Serious Fraud Office’s determination to investigate and hold companies to account where those standards are breached.” The contracts in question were a £200m deal awarded by Oman’s ministry of transport and communications, another for technology and e-commerce solutions at Houari Boumediene airport in Algiers, and a third for encryption technology for Algeria’s ministry of post and telecommunications. The Algerian contracts, which ultimately the company did not secure, were expected to generate a profit of £1.4m. …