Petrofac’s Founder Sued After Bribery and Money Laundering Allegations!


Oil service provider “Petrofac” is under a lawsuit after one of its founders Ayman Asfari has been pleaded guilty to bribery and various other corruption charges. The oil company currently is being investigated by the serious fraud office (SFO) for suspected corruption, bribery and money laundering charges.

The SFO started its inquiry in 2017 into allegations that Petrofac had laundered money and paid bribes. Following the investigation, the share price of Petrofac fell from £9 to £3.47 and faced a huge loss of 14% of its worth. The shareholders stated that Petrofac issued misleading and false statements and inquiries concerning all the alleged frauds. They also claimed that the company failed to disclose important compliance policies. However, earlier this year, the share price recovered a little but has again fallen back to £4.

About the cases against Asfari:

A major financial backer of the company, Asfari together with his wife, has almost donated £800,000 to Petrofac since 2009. However, as per the Serious Fraud office’s investigation, in 2017, Ayman Asfari was charged for a scam and later was questioned about his company’s Petrofac activities related to Unaoil. He was interviewed and arrested alongside a former chief operating officer of Petrofac under caution in 2017 by the SFO, and later released without any charge. While Asfari completely denied all the charges made against him, he was suspended from his position. However, later in May 2018, he resumed his duties as Petrofac’s Chief Executive.





Apart from this, Ayman Asfari was also fined a huge sum of £300,000 for insider trading by the Consob-an Italian market regulator. But, he again denied all the charges and said that he’ll fight against the fine. However, he lost this case in March this year.  In 2018, Asfari even faced a great humiliation of falling out of the Forbes Billionaire list. He even bought the shares of Petrofac and developed his stake from a few percents but this also didn’t work in his favors.

At present, it’s certain that the future of both Petrofac and Ayman Asfari is uncertain. The case is ongoing under the SFO’s team, and other members and executives of Petrofac are also being questioned.

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