Deloitte’s Glencore audits face UK probe over eight-year span

Deloitte Under Investigation Over Glencore Audits

The accounting firm Deloitte is being scrutinized by the industry regulator over its audits of the FTSE 100 commodities and mining company Glencore, along with its UK branch, spanning eight years.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) stated it is examining whether Deloitte’s audits of Glencore and its subsidiary Glencore Energy UK, conducted between 2013 and 2020, adequately addressed potential breaches of laws and regulations.

In 2022, Glencore was ordered to pay £281m in fines, confiscated profits, and legal costs after admitting to seven counts of bribery—the largest penalty ever levied on a company in a UK court at the time.

Court proceedings revealed that Glencore staff and intermediaries paid $27m (£20m) in bribes to officials in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, and South Sudan.

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO), which brought the case, detailed how Glencore employees transported cash bribes to Africa via private jets and falsified documents to conceal the transactions.

The FRC’s enforcement unit will handle the investigation, approved by the regulator’s conduct committee in March but only disclosed this week.

The SFO originally launched a wide-ranging probe into Glencore in 2019, known as Operation Azoth. Last August, Alex Beard, the company’s former billionaire oil trading chief, was accused of involvement in illicit payments tied to Glencore’s operations in West Africa.

Beard and five other former Glencore executives are scheduled to face trial in London in 2027 on bribery charges.