Alstom and corporate bribery

Tom Shipley

What happened?

The Alstom scandal is a landmark corporate bribery case, which is notable for the seriousness of the offences and their global reach. In the words of Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, a US Department of Justice official who had a leading role in investigating this case, the Alstom scheme was “astounding in its breadth, its brazenness and its worldwide consequences” having been “sustained over more than a decade and across several continents” (US Department of Justice 2014a). While the scale of this scandal, which involved millions of dollars in bribe payments to secure an estimated $4 billion in projects, is particularly shocking, it is a good illustration of the common mechanics of these schemes and the conditions that allow them to prosper.

Headquartered in France but with operations in around 70 countries, at the time these offences took place Alstom's core business was in the power and rail sectors. Alstom was a leading international firm engaged in building and maintaining the power plants and grids, which keep the lights on, and the rail networks, which keep countries on the move. The company clocked up sales of around €21 billion annually in the 2000s, employing up to 110,000 people around the world (United States v Alstom 2014). Operating in a competitive international market, a large part of Alstom's business depended on securing large, high-value contracts from state-owned power and transport companies.

The charges filed against Alstom by the US Department of Justice show that the company systematically employed bribery as a strategy for securing business from these state-owned enterprises (SOEs) (United States v Alstom 2014). The charges cover Alstom's operations in five countries – the Bahamas, Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan – and relate to conduct dating back to the late 1990s through to around 2011. The company's conduct in Indonesia, where some of the most egregious wrongdoing took place, provides an insight into how this scheme worked in practice.

A key client for Alstom in Indonesia was the state-owned electricity company PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (“PLN”), which in the 2000s was looking for support to increase power generation in the country.