Ten Not Out! – SFO Secures Its Tenth DPA (Amec Foster Wheeler Energy Ltd)

On 1 July 2021, coincidentally the tenth anniversary of the UK's Bribery Act coming into force, the UK's tenth deferred prosecution agreement (“DPA”) was approved between the UK Serious Fraud Office (“SFO”) and Amec Foster Wheeler Energy Limited (“AFWEL”), a UK-based global engineering company (read the SFO press release here). This concludes the SFO's four-year investigation of the legacy Foster Wheeler and Amec Foster Wheeler businesses. The DPA was previously agreed in principle at a private hearing held on 25 June 2021 before Lord Justice Edis, sitting at the Royal Courts of Justice (see details of the private hearing here).

Under the terms of the DPA, AFWEL has taken responsibility for ten offences relating to the use of corrupt agents in the oil and gas sector between 1996 and 2014 across five jurisdictions spanning four continents. AFWEL and its parent company, John Wood Group plc (“Wood”) have agreed to pay £103 million, including a financial penalty of £46,033,891.98, compensation payments to the people of Nigeria of £210,610, disgorgement of profits of £47,815,914.15 representing the gain from the criminal conduct, and a contribution to the SFO's costs of £3.4 million. Wood has made an undertaking to cover pay AFWEL's financial penalty and SFO costs, and to report annually on its group-wide ethics and compliance programme during the three-year term of the DPA.

In this briefing, we provide an overview of the recent AFWEL DPA and discuss three key takeaways from Lord Justice Edis's judgment approving the DPA. The full briefing is available here.

The DPA only relates to the potential criminal liability of Amec Foster Wheeler Energy Limited and does not address whether liability of any sort attaches to any employee, agent, former employee or former agent of Amec Foster Wheeler Energy Limited.