LONDON (Reuters) -Britain’s Serious Fraud Office has arrested three people as part of an international bribery investigation into British infrastructure provider Blu-3 and “former associates” of the global construction firm Mace Group.
The SFO said in a statement on Wednesday that more than 70 of its staff had searched four homes and one commercial property in Britain, and Monaco authorities had searched another suspect’s premises.
The SFO said people at Blu-3 were suspected of paying more than 3 million pounds ($3.99 million) in bribes to individuals they referred to as former associates of the Mace Group relating to the construction of a datacentre in the Netherlands for Microsoft.
“Mace has a zero tolerance approach to breaches of our code of ethics and takes any allegations of bribery extremely seriously,” said a spokesperson for the Mace Group, which built London’s Shard skyscraper,
“We are committed to fully supporting the Serious Fraud Office in investigating allegations against any former associates of the group.”
Blu-3 said it was supporting an external SFO investigation and was fully cooperating with the agency.
“We take matters of this nature extremely seriously and are committed to upholding the highest standards of integrity and ethical conduct across all of our operations,” Blu-3 said in a statement.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Paying bribes to do business undermines our financial markets, the reputation of British companies and the rule of law and will not be tolerated,” SFO’s director Nick Ephgrave said.
($1 = 0.7514 pounds)
(Reporting by Muvija M; Writing by Catarina Demony; Editing by William James, Barbara Lewis and Jan Harvey)
