Two former CEOs of Innospec businesses were charged with corruption in the U.K. last week.
The Serious Fraud Office said Dennis Kerrison and Paul Jennings appeared before Westminster Magistrates’ Court Thursday on charges ‘surrounding alleged corrupt payments to gain public contracts in Indonesia.’
Jennings was also charged for alleged corrupt payments in Iraq.
The case was sent to the Southwark Crown Court.
Last month, a former Innospec business unit director, Dr David Turner, 56, was charged in London with conspiring to make corrupt payments to public officials in Indonesia and Iraq. His case is also pending in the Southwark Crown Court.
Kerrison, 67, of Chertsey, Surrey, was CEO of Associated Octel Corporation (subsequently renamed Innospec Ltd). He was charged with conspiracy to corrupt by bribing public officials and other agents of the government of Indonesia. The payments were intended to secure sales of Innospec’s gasoline additive, tetraethyl lead.
Jennings, 54, of Neston, Cheshire, is also a former CEO of Innospec. The SFO charged him with two allegations of conspiracy to corrupt. He allegedly bribed government officials in both Indonesia and Iraq to sell tetraethyl lead.
Jennings is also accused of conspiracy to defraud Ethyl Corporation by bribing government officials in Iraq ‘as inducements to ensure that tests on MMT, a competitor product manufactured by Ethyl Corporation . . . concluded with an unfavourable assessment of that product.’
The alleged offences happened between 2002 and 2008, the SFO said.
The next hearing in the case is set for January 6, 2012.
In March last year, Innospec — a specialty chemical-maker based in Delaware — reached a $40 million global settlement of more than a dozen criminal charges in the U.S. and U.K.
Innospec’s agent in Iraq, Ousama Naaman, pleaded guilty in June last year in Washington, D.C. to conspiracy and violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He’s waiting to be sentenced.
Kerrison and Jennings were released on conditional bail.
The SFO’s Ocober 27 release is here.
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