NEW YORK: French bank Societe Generale will pay US authorities $1.34 billion to settle allegations that it bribed officials in Libya and also manipulated the Libor interest rate benchmark, the US Justice Department announced Monday.
A unit of the bank has agreed to plead guilty in a New York court to the Libya bribery charges, which involved payments made between 2004 and 2009 to gain investment management deals from the Libyan government.
The Libor allegations stemmed from 2010-2011, when, the Justice Department said, the bank's managers ordered staff to manipulate the key rate in a way that would make the bank itself look financially stronger and more credit-worthy than it actually was.
"For years, Societe Generale undermined the integrity of global markets and foreign institutions by issuing false financial data and by fraudulently securing contracts through bribery," said Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan.
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