More trouble for Monsanto (First of a Monsanto Hat Trick)

[nosmokes]

original-PJStar

More trouble for Monsanto

Alan Guebert
Agriculture

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

On March 6, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., alleging that in 2002 Charles M. Martin, then Monsanto Co.'s "Government Affairs Director for Asia, authorized and directed an Indonesian consulting firm to pay a bribe totaling $50,000 to a senior Indonesian Ministry of Environment official."

The payment, the filing said, "was made to influence the Senior Environment Official to repeal language in a decree that was unfavorable to Monsanto's business in Indonesia."

Later the SEC explains the "unfavorable" decree was a mid-2001 government ruling that required "bio-technology products . . . such as Monsanto's Bollgard Cotton . . . for the first time, to undergo an AMDAL process (environmental impact assessment) before they could be cultivated in Indonesia."

That assessment, the SEC continues, "posed a considerable obstacle to the success of Monsanto's existing Bollgard Cotton project and Monsanto's ability to successfully market other GMOs in Indonesia and elsewhere in the Asia Pacific region."

Especially so, notes the SEC, because in "February, 2001, Monsanto obtained limited approval from Indonesia's Ministry of Agriculture allowing farmers in South Sulawesi, Indonesia to grow Bollgard Cotton. . . . "

Shortly thereafter, however, a change in government brought a change in rules.

The $50,000 payment wasn't the only money Monsanto spent on Indonesian officials. As the Martin complaint explains in a paragraph labeled "Other Relevant Entities," the SEC already had moved against the St. Louis biotech company in early 2005 "for violating the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)..."

On Jan. 6, 2005, the SEC "filed two settled enforcement proceedings" against Monsanto whereby the company - "without admitting or denying the Commission's charges" - consented to pay "a $500,000 civil penalty" as "a final judgment in (a) federal lawsuit."

The suit, brought by the SEC, "charged that, from 1997 to 2002, Monsanto inaccurately recorded, or failed to record, in its books and records approximately $700,000 of illegal or questionable payments made to at least 140 current and former Indonesian government officials and their family members."

The settlement agreement adds, "The approximate $700,000 was derived from a bogus product registration scheme undertaken by two Indonesian entities owned or controlled by Monsanto."

But since the SEC "considered the cooperation that Monsanto provided the Commission staff during its investigation" important to connect the Indonesian dots, the U.S. Justice Department "entered into an agreement . . . to defer prosecution on charges of violating the anti-bribery and books and records provision of the FCPA."
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