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Ex-Fluor employee jailed for rigging contracts

By Tim Harris
February 02, 2012

A MAN who worked for a Farnborough company was jailed on Tuesday, for his part in an international energy sector corruption ring plotting to rig contracts worth £70 million.

Ronald Saunders, 64, of Bell Meadow Road, Hook, who formerly worked for Fluor, leaked confidential information to his accomplices.

He gave details on four lucrative contracts to Andrew Rybak, 55, and Phillip Hammond, 57, who handed it over to bidding firms in return for secret payments.

Rybak, from Wickham, and Hammond, who lives in Belgium, were also sent to prison.

The men appeared before Southwark Crown Court.

The businessmen are believed to have netted £700,000 in backhanders as a reward for their services.

Ringleader Rybak coordinated corrupt practices around five separate contracts, to supply parts at overseas energy facilities in Iran, Egypt, Russia, Singapore and Abu Dhabi.

Hammond worked with Rybak at his Gibraltar-based Strategic Project Services (SPS) company to help sabotage the bidding process in four of the projects.

The two men used a series of aliases to approach firms trying to win contracts offering inside information.

Rybak and Hammond demanded payments of between three and six per cent of the final contract values in return.

Saunders fed the two men information, repeatedly abusing his position as an agent for companies managing the procurement of the parts for the sites, the court heard during the three-and-a-half-month trial.

Graham Marchmont, another former Fluor employee involved, is said to have worked alongside Saunders at various procurement firms.

Marchmont has since fled to the Philippines, where he cannot be extradited to face charges.

Mukul Chawla QC, prosecuting said: “They (the contracts) were corrupted – by Mr Marchmont and Mr Saunders, the two insiders, and Mr Rybak and Mr Hammond as outsiders – by essentially providing confidential information in the expectation of reward.

“Armed with this information, bidding companies were approached by Mr Rybak and Mr Hammond and supplied with much of the confidential information that had been supplied by Mr Marchmont and Mr Saunders.”

In 2002, Saunders passed confidential information to Rybak and Hammond he had access to while working for Italian firm Snamprogetti.

The company had been tasked with sourcing a splitter column for a styrene monomer production plant in Iran.

Rybak and Hammond passed the information on to Walter Tosto Serbatoi SPA, and when Snamprogetti later won the bid, they paid SPS £65,000, of which £5,200 went to Saunders, £13,000 to Hammond and £34,000 to Rybak, the court heard.

Another deal in 2005 saw the trio net around £175,000, when Saunders fed sensitive information to SPS about a generator package to be used in the QASR Gas Gathering project, in Egypt.

Saunders, Rybak and Hammond pocketed a further £500,000 in 2006, after they successfully rigged two of seven contracts with Fluor.

The Farnborough firm – previously based in Camberley – had been employed to coordinate the building of a booster station in a multi-million pound oil and gas pipeline on the Russian island of Sakhalin.

“The email traffic passing from Mr Marchmont and Mr Saunders inside Fluor to Mr Rybak and Mr Hammond demonstrates the complete contempt with which these defendants regarded the confidentiality of the bidding process,” added Mr Chawla.

Attempts to rig other contracts worth £18m ultimately failed.

Saunders told the court that he lived “in the real world,” where inside information was often leaked.

He said: “It (confidential information), is often disclosed to third parties, especially if it’s in the best interests of the project.”

Saunders, Rybak and Hammond were convicted of multiple conspiracy to corrupt charges, and will serve a total of 11 and-a-half-year prison sentences between them.

Saunders was given a three-and-a-half-year sentence, Rybak five years, and Hammond three.

The trio will serve half their sentences before being released on licence.

Judge Deborah Taylor, sentencing, described the defendants’ activities as ‘parasitic’.

Barry Smith, 71, of Churt Road, Farnham, who joined the three men in attempting to rig one of the contracts, was also convicted of conspiracy to corrupt.

He was given a 12-month suspended sentence, told to complete 300 hours unpaid work, and fined £20,000 court costs.

Robert Storey, 67, of Windlesham, Surrey, another defendant, was cleared of all charges.

Meanwhile, compensation and court costs are set to be dealt with later on in the coming year.

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