Call for urgent government review of Compass Group whistleblower case
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Version 0 of 1. The home secretary has been asked to conduct an urgent review of how a whistleblower’s allegations of corruption at Compass Group are being investigated, after anti-corruption campaigners claimed UK prosecutors only became interested in the case after prompting by the FBI. The move comes after the Guardian revealed a series of allegations made against the FTSE 100 catering conglomerate, based on a cache of private documents relating to an ongoing employment tribunal claim. The claimant is Karim Pabani, a former finance director of a Compass subsidiary in Kazakhstan who claims he was sacked after blowing the whistle on corruption. In a letter to the home secretary, Theresa May, the policy director of Corruption Watch, Susan Hawley, and the chief executive of the whistleblower charity Public Concern at Work, Cathy James, wrote: “At a time that the Prime Minister is seeking international leadership on corruption, the UK can ill afford to be seen to be slow on the uptake with corruption allegations or indeed less proactive than its international partners in responding to whistleblowers.” Related: Compass Group subsidiary 'paid bribes to Kazakhstan customs officials' The Guardian revealed the contents of documents relating to the Pabani case last week, which showed how a Compass subsidiary paid bribes to Kazakh customs officials through “freight forwarders”, a practice the group says it eradicated as soon as it was discovered in 2011. The papers also show how Compass uncovered a suspected fraud at its joint venture with a state-owned oil company, where a supplier linked to an employee pocketed £160,000 after overcharging the joint venture. Compass says it has been a victim of fraud in this case. The joint venture was run at the time by Timur Kurenbekov, the son of a senior Kazakh government official and thought to have been the key to the joint venture winning major contracts in Kazakhstan. Pabani also alleged in his tribunal witness statement that Kurenbekov had been “removing money from the business through the use of their suppliers”. Compass has yet to respond in detail to Pabani’s employment tribunal claims. A spokesman said: “Compass is vigorously defending these allegations [in the tribunal] but as the matter is subject to ongoing legal proceedings we are not able to comment further at this time.” The Corruption Watch and Public Concern at Work letter alleges that UK prosecutors were slow to act on the initial allegations, with British authorities taking “three months to do what the US authorities did in two weeks”. It says the case was incorrectly assigned to the City of London’s overseas anti-corruption unit (OACU) instead of the Serious Fraud Office, which has wider investigatory powers, and that the unit’s handling of the material “appears to have been seriously inadequate” with it taking “over a year to interview a key witness”. Pabani contacted the FBI in April 2014 and was interviewed at a meeting on 1 May 2014 at the US embassy in London by “a representative from the FBI’s International Corruption Unit and a Department of Justice attorney,” the letter states. After alerting the SFO to the allegations three times, twice via its confidential reporting line and a third time directly, Pabani was “contacted by OACU in June 2014,” the letter states. A spokesman for the OACU said: “The City of London police overseas anti-corruption unit has received an allegation of foreign corruption made by a former employee of a UK-based company. They are currently in the ongoing process of assessing material provided and other information with a view to establishing whether the matter should be adopted for investigation”. An SFO spokesperson said: “The City of London police is currently in the process of assessing material provided as well as other information with a view to establishing whether the matter should be adopted for investigation. “With all such matters we work collaboratively with the City of London police. If there are allegations of corruption which meet the SFO’s criteria, then these are taken forward by the SFO”. The FBI declined to comment. |