A Paris court fined French oil and gas group Total 500,000 euros ($570,000) on Friday for bribing foreign public officials in a case related to Iranian contracts in 1997, reports Reuters.
Total, was charged with paying 30 million dollars under the cover of a consultancy contract to facilitate a deal for the South Pars gas field more than two decades ago, which the Paris prosecutor said covered “corruption payments”.
Court documents said that from around 1995 to 2004, at the request of an Iranian official cited as Medhi Hashemi Rafsanjani, the son of Iran’s former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Total and intermediaries made illicit payments to middlemen designated by Medhi to help the company.
Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani was not immediately available to comment on Friday.
Total’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanne said in a statement after the ruling that the company would no longer pursue the matter because none of the individuals under investigation were still alive.
“Anyone who knew [former Total CEO] Christophe de Margerie knows that he would never be involved in any type of corruption,” Pouyanne said.
“However, given the specific circumstances of this case, which has been already judged in the US and in which none of the individuals can defend themselves, Total doesn’t want to pursue it,” he added.