Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that The firm also said it will pay more than $1bn (£800m) to resolve similar claims with the US and Brazil.
The UK’s Serious Fraud Office said it had exposed “profit-driven bribery and corruption” across Glencore Energy UK’s oil operations in five African nations.
The firm will find how much it must pay in fines at a sentencing in June.
It previously set aside $1.5bn to cover the investigations it faced in the UK, US and Brazil.
Chairman Kalidas Madhavpeddi said: “Glencore today is not the company it was when the unacceptable practices behind this misconduct occurred.
“The board and the management team are committed to operating a company that creates value for all stakeholders by operating transparently under a well-defined set of values, with openness and integrity at the forefront.”
Spotlight on Corruption, a pressure group, welcomed the charges but said it was essential that those responsible for the wrongdoing, including senior executives and the parent company, were held to account.
“It’s also critical that the $1.5 billion that Glencore has set aside to settle the investigations includes compensation for the victims of their alleged corruption in West Africa,” it said.
Details in charges against Glencore indicate how much companies can stand to gain or lose by reporting false information to pricing agencies.
For example, in one 2012 case cited by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Glencore’s long exposure to the average daily Platts US Gulf Coast high sulfur fuel oil benchmark for November amounted to in excess of 8.8 million barrels. That’s enough to fill more than four supertankers.
Traders typically also hold short positions as a hedge, and the documents don’t specify what Glencore’s net position was. High sulfur fuel oil is used by merchant ships, where it’s known as bunker fuel, and also for power generation.
The CFTC said Glencore traders reported bids and raised bids to Platts 728 times that November and reported 59 cargo purchases with the intention to “manipulate upward” the daily benchmark and derivatives such as swaps and futures that use the price as a reference for settlement.
And in July 2018, Glencore traders holding short exposure of more than 4 million barrels for the same benchmark worked to drive the Platts assessment price down by reporting low offers in the pricing window.
That puts companies making deals using benchmarks set at artificially high or low prices at a disadvantage.
European Union probes into oil-price assessments about a decade ago partly led to greater oversight by the International Organization of Securities Commissions. That may not have been enough, according to Bossley.
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