New York, Dec 7 A subsidiary of global consulting company McKinsey has reached a $122.85 million settlement with US prosecutors in a South African bribery case involving a former Indian executive, according to officials.
"McKinsey Africa has agreed to pay a criminal penalty of more than $122 million" to resolve the case of bribery of "South African officials in order to obtain lucrative consulting business that generated tens of millions of dollars in profits," Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri said on Thursday.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) said that between 2012 and 2016 the subsidiary of the global consultancy company McKinsey through its senior partner Vikas Sagar agreed to pay bribes to former officials of state-owned South African companies to get confidential information that netted the company $85 million in profits.
It said that Sagar, 56, had separately pleaded guilty "to participating in a conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act" in a case before the federal court of the Southern District of New York in Manhattan.
In court documents, federal prosecutor Damian Williams said Sagar would forfeit -- meaning the government will seize -- all his property traceable to the bribery scheme.
Court papers identified Sagar as an Indian citizen with a green card who was living in South Africa.
The DOJ said in a news statement that in reaching the agreement with McKinsey it gave it "credit for its cooperation with the Department's investigation" turning over documents, financial records, and emails, and reporting Sagar's attempts to delete documents.
McKinsey and its subsidiary also voluntarily repaid to South African state-owned enterprises the "revenues received from potentially tainted contracts" due to the bribery.
According to a court document, through bribery McKinsey Africa obtained from government enterprises, the transportation and pipelines company Transnet, and the energy company Eskom, sensitive confidential information about consulting contracts.
Based on the information, it submitted proposals for multimillion-dollar consulting contracts "while knowing that South African consulting firms with which McKinsey Africa had partnered would pay a portion of their fees as bribes to officials at Transnet and Eskom," the DOJ said.
According to Sagar's LinkedIn bio, he studied at The Lawrence School in Sanawar, Himachal Pradesh, and received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and his MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
He left McKinsey in 2017 after a 16-year stint.
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