Nick Snow
OGJ Washington Editor
WASHINGTON, DC, Nov. 16 -- A former consultant for Willbros International Inc. pleaded guilty on Nov. 12 to charges that he was part of a conspiracy to pay more than $6 million in bribes to Nigerian government officials and officials of a Nigerian political party, the US Department of Justice announced.
Paul G. Novak pleaded guilty before US District Judge Simon T. Lake in Houston to one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and one substantive count of violating the FCPA, DOJ’s criminal division said. Sentencing was scheduled for Feb. 19, 2010.
“The use of intermediaries to pay bribes will not escape prosecution under the FCPA,” said Assistant US Atty. Gen. Lanny A. Breuer, who leads the criminal division. “The department will continue to hold accountable all the players in an FCPA scheme, from the companies and their executives who hatch [it] to the consultant they retain to carry it out.”
In his plea, Novak admitted that from late 2003 to March 2005, he conspired with others to pay more than $6 million in bribes to various Nigerian government officials and officials from one of the country’s political parties, DOJ said.
It said the payments’ purpose was to help Willbros International, a subsidiary of Houston-based Willbros Group Inc., obtain and retain work on the Eastern Gas Gathering System (EGGS) project, which was valued at $387 million. The EGGS project was a natural gas pipeline system in the Niger Delta designed to relieve existing pipeline capacity constraints, it explained.
DOJ said according to information in his plea, Novak and alleged coconspirators Kenneth Tillery, Jason Steph, Jim Bob Brown, and three employees of a German construction company agreed to bribe, among others, officials from Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. and National Petroleum Investment Services, a senior official in the Nigerian government’s executive branch, members of a Nigerian political party, and officials from the Shell Petroleum Development Co. of Nigeria Ltd.
To finance the bribes, Novak said Steph and others caused another Willbros subsidiary, Willbros West Africa Inc., to enter into consultancy agreements with two companies Novak represented in exchange for purportedly legitimate consultancy services.
The companies actually were used to facilitate bribe payments, according to the plea. Specifically, they would invoice Willbros West Africa for purported consulting services and receive payments from Willbros International’s back account in Houston to the consulting companies’ back accounts in Lebanon. Novak would then use money from the Lebanese bank accounts to bribe officials in Nigeria.
Brown and Steph, who are former Willbros executives, previously pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiring to violate the FCPA and are scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 28, 2010. Tillery, who worked at Willbros International from the 1980s through January 2005 and was its executive vice president and president, remains a fugitive.
Willbros International and Willbros Group entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with DOJ on May 14, 2008, in which they agreed to pay a $22 million criminal fine in connection with the payment of bribes to government officials in Ecuador as well as Nigeria.
Contact Nick Snow at [email protected].
Map from Sintana Energy.
