SAPURA Energy Berhad and its group of companies strongly refute any involvement in any form of bribery or corruption in its business dealings in Brazil and anywhere else in the world, the global oil and gas service provider said in a media statement today.
The statement was issued in relation to recent news on investigations involving Sapura and Seadrill for alleged bribery involvement relating to Petrobras contracts.
Sapura said, in an earlier investigation by Brazilian authorities in 2016 and 2017, the company was cleared of all allegations of bribery or corruption.
“We have in the past cooperated and will continue to cooperate with any investigation or regulatory authority in relation to bribery and corruption,” the company said.
“Sapura has a strict policy against bribery and corruption, and has internal policies and procedures to mitigate this risk,” it added .
According to the statement, as part of its governance and processes, Sapura had a clause in all its agreements on anti-bribery which would make the agreement void if bribery was involved or was suspected to be involved.
“We have in the past taken immediate steps to cease contractual obligations whenever a suspicion of bribery or corruption was raised. These facts demonstrate and are clear evidence of the company’s commitment to its zero-tolerance policy towards bribery and corruption.”
Earlier today, Reuters reported that Brazillian and Dutch police executed dozens of search warrants on Wednesday as part of a corruption probe into offshore oil rig company Seadrill Ltd and Malaysia‘s Sapura Energy Bhd, as Brazil’s famed ‘Car Wash’ corruption investigation eyes an increasing number of international firms.
According to Reuters, federal prosecutors in Brazil, in a statement said, they had carried out 25 searches, concentrated in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, while Dutch police had also carried out searches as part of a parallel investigation into the matter.
The prosecutors described the operation as an attempt to deepen ongoing probes into three contracts worth US$2.7 bil (RM11.25 bil) signed between Sapura and state-run oil firm Petrobras in 2011.
The report stated that prosecutors, in a statement, described an alleged scheme in which Sapura, a joint venture in Brazil between Sapura Energy and Seadrill, allegedly paid bribes worth 1.5% of the contracts it won with Petrobras.
Some of that bribe money was said appeared to have made its way back to two “high-ranking” Sapura Energy executives in Malaysia.
As at 3.09pm, Sapura share price was at 11 sen with a market capital of 1.76 bil.
Meanwhile, AmBank Research has maintained its sell call on Sapura Energy with an unchanged fair value of RM0.05/share, pegged to 0.2 times to the group’s financial year ending Jan 2022 forecast net tangible asset (FY22F NTA) as the group could still experience potential losses and asset impairments in the upcoming quarters amid revenue deferrals.
“Amid these worrisome legal issues, the group’s huge debt of RM10bil still needs to be refinanced with 14 banks by December 2020, which could mean additional equity-raising exercise in the pipeline that will translate to massive dilution given the current low share price,” said analyst Alex Goh.
“Even though Sapura registered an improvement in the first half of financial year ending Jan 2021 (1HFY21) results, we remain cautious of any potential cost provisions and asset impairments by the fourth quarter of financial year ending Jan 2021 (4QFY21) given that Petronas has registered a 1HFY20 loss of RM18bil, together with other oil majors,” he added.
