Essentra plc (LON:ESNT) has announced that its subsidiary entity, Essentra FZE Company Limited has reached a public settlement with the US Department of Justice, and under the terms of a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the DoJ, as well as a corresponding settlement with the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, has agreed to pay a cash penalty of US $666,543.88 (c£530,000 at the current exchange rate).
This settlement resolves the DoJ’s and OFAC’s investigation into a small number of unauthorised transactions engaged in during 2018 by two employees of Essentra FZE (which undertakes Essentra’s Filters activities in Dubai) and linked to North Korea. None of the transactions were approved or known by senior management outside of the UAE and both employees have since been exited from the business. As reported in the Company’s 2019 Annual Report, Essentra has cooperated fully with the DoJ and OFAC during the investigation.
Separately, as disclosed in Essentra’s 2019 Full Year Results announcement and Annual Report, the Company has made a voluntary disclosure to OFAC, with regards to certain historic transactions dating as far back as 2015.
Essentra is committed to doing business the right way to continually earn the trust of its customers, other stakeholders and the wider marketplace. Essentra takes compliance with sanctions very seriously and has a programme in place designed to ensure compliance with applicable sanctions. These issues arose as a result of isolated failures to follow the programme and, in response, Essentra has taken swift action to strengthen the control processes in place to ensure that such activity does not take place in the future.
Commenting on today’s announcement, Paul Forman, Essentra plc Chief Executive said:
“A very thorough and in depth investigation has been carried out to fully understand the root cause of the issues we have seen. We have made a very significant investment of both time and money, which has now equipped us with enhanced protection against any potential future issues of this nature”.
