Alcoa Inc., the largest U.S. aluminum producer, agreed to pay $384 million to settle U.S. allegations that one of its units bribed members of Bahrain’s royal family and officials at a state-owned company to win business.

Alcoa World Alumina LLC, a majority-owned unit that supplies the raw material used by smelters to make aluminum, will plead guilty to one count of violating the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in a 2004 transaction, the Department of Justice said in a statement today.

As admitted in the charging documents, in 2004, Alcoa World Alumina corruptly secured a long-term alumina supply agreement with Alba by agreeing to purportedly sell over 1.5 million metric tons of alumina to Alba through offshore shell companies owned by Consultant A. The sham distributorship permitted Consultant A to mark up the price of alumina by approximately $188 million from 2005 to 2009, the duration of the corrupt supply agreement. Court filings allege that Consultant A used the mark-up to pay tens of millions in corrupt kickbacks to Bahraini government officials, including senior members of Bahrain’s Royal Family. To conceal the illicit payments, Consultant A and the government officials used various offshore bank accounts, including accounts held under aliases, at several major financial institutions around the world, including in Guernsey, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.

“As the beneficiary of a long-running bribery scheme perpetrated by a closely controlled subsidiary, Alcoa is liable and must be held responsible,” George Canellos, co-director of the SEC Enforcement Division, said in the agency’s statement.

The company took a $62 million charge in the second quarter of 2013 on a proposed settlement with the Justice Department over the matter. It said at the time that the SEC had rejected a proposed settlement for the allegations.

Alcoa World Alumina is a unit of a joint venture that is 60 percent owned by Alcoa and 40 percent owned by Alumina Ltd. The venture was formed in 1994, according to Alumina.
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