Five former employees at Glencore will stand trial for bribery offences, as the Serious Fraud Office takes on the former top bosses and oil traders at the commodities giant. The five defendants face varying charges of conspiring to pay bribes to public officials in Nigeria, Cameroon and Ivory Coast, in order to obtain favourable oil deals in these countries.
Alex Beard, Andrew Gibson, Paul Hopkirk, Ramon Labiaga, Martin Wakefield and David Perez were charged by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in August 2024 following an investigation into the oil behemoth’s activities in Africa.
Hopkirk, Labiaga, Wakefield and Perez – all traders on Glencore’s West Africa desk – pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the charges against them in November 2025. This was followed by the later arraignment in September 2026 of Beard, the billionaire former Global Head of Oil, and Gibson, former Head of Oil operations, during which they entered ‘not guilty’ pleas.
The defendants’ pleas set the scene for a blockbuster corruption trial scheduled to start in October 2027.
Senior executives rarely find themselves in the dock to account for allegations of corporate wrongdoing, making the pleas a significant milestone in one of the biggest bribery investigations of the last decade. The case now moves towards a hotly contested trial, placing greater pressure on the SFO to secure successful prosecutions. The prosecution will be a key test of the agency’s strategy and strength in taking on well-resourced white-collar defendants.
