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The High Court has dismissed with costs a case brought by Arandis Energy against Xaris Energy over a controversial tender for a 250MW gas power project. Acting judge Collins Parker ruled that there had been an unreasonable delay in making the application, which was submitted 16 months after NamPower selected Xaris as preferred bidder. Arandis had argued that the delay was justified because mines and energy minister Obeth Kandjoze had begun an investigation into the tendering process in April 2015 and the company was awaiting the result. But Parker ruled that accepting this argument “would be setting a very dangerous precedent”.

Switzerland’s Federal Council on 22 May opened a consultation procedure (due to end 12 September 2013) on the preliminary draft of the Federal Act on the Freezing and Restitution of Assets of Politically Exposed Persons obtained by Unlawful Means. The new law would allow Switzerland to freeze the assets of politically exposed persons (PEPs) and would set up a framework to confiscate and return assets to the countries from which they were taken.

The New York-based Revenue Watch Institute has given a positive assessment of Ghana’s Stabilisation Fund and Heritage Fund, saying they met 13 of 16 good governance fundamentals. The two funds, established under the Petroleum Revenue Management Act of March 2011, were described as featuring” clear deposit, withdrawal and investment rules, effective oversight, and other essential attributes of good governance”. The government published a reconciliation report in March this year detailing the sums passing through the Petroleum Holding Fund, from where oil money is allocated to Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, the annual budget, and the two petroleum funds.

While much of the world was distracted by Donald Trump’s election in the US, Rio Tinto announced on 9 November that it had suspended energy and minerals head Alan Davies and accepted the resignation of legal and regulatory affairs executive Debra Valentine after discovering $10.5m in payments to a French adviser to Guinean President Alpha Condé.Rio said it had launched an investigation and alerted regulators after becoming aware on 29 August of emails from 2011 that referred to contractual payments to an unidentified consultant relating to its Simandou iron ore project.

Anti-corruption campaigners including the London-based NGO Corruption Watch and Angola’s Associação Mãos Livres, have called on the Swiss government to reopen an investigation into a 1990s debt repayment deal between Angola and Russia. Corruption Watch, run by the former African National Congress MP Andrew Feinstein, released a 166-page report, ‘Deception in High Places: The Corrupt Angola-Russia Debt Deal’, on 16 April detailing how more than $700m ended up in private hands following a mid-1990s restructuring of Angolan debt to Russia. The report was presented in the European Parliament on 23 April as an example of the plundering that can take place in developing nations with the complicity of European banks and tax havens.

An extensive World Bank study, Left out of the Bargain - Settlements in Foreign Bribery Cases and Implications for Asset Recovery, has found that from1999-mid 2012 395 enforcement settlements for corruption took place, raising $6.9bn. But just 3.3% ($197m) was returned to the countries where the crime took place. The report highlights the tricky issue of how international anti-corruption enforcement can best repatriate. tainted assets and proceeds to the victim countries in line with Chapter 5 of United Nations Convention against Corruption. The study also notes some cases where companies have been told to pay fines to the countries concerned but have failed to do so – for example construction firm Mabey & Johnson, which was caught paying bribes to Iraqi officials in Ghana and Jamaica.

The government has included anti-bribery provisions in four out of six petroleum agreements (PAs) currently before parliament for approval. “We are encouraged that PAs for the first time in Ghana’s history contain provisions that shun corruption especially through bribery or any inducement of public officials, politicians and political parties,” the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (Acep) think tank said in a statement. A new clause requires companies to certify compliance with the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the UK Bribery Act, and the anti-bribery convention of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Italian engineering company Saipem, 42% owned by Eni, appointed a corporate governance veteran to its board in late July. The new deputy chairman and non-executive director is Piergaetano Marchetti, a lawyer and professor emeritus in commercial law at the University of Milan. “Marchetti is an expert on corporate governance and will bring great depth of expertise,” said Saipem chief executive Umberto Vergine. Saipem is embroiled in a corruption investigation in Algeria and on 30 July announced a Q2 13 net loss of €685m ($911m) and an operating loss of €670m as revenue slipped 36% to €2.10bn.

Canada’s troubled SNC-Lavalin has been hit with a Standard & Poor’s (S&P) downgrade as the ratings agency warned of the risk of weaker profit in the wake of corruption scandals surrounding the firm’s operations in Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Bangladesh. S&P cut its ratings from BBB+ to BBB with negative outlook.

Sonangol’s new board has said that a thorough investigation of the parastatal’s financial and management problems has revealed that the situation is worse than expected. With $1.6bn of debt payments due by year-end, the company has been in talks with international banks to secure financing. The company’s total debt is estimated at $9.85bn.A 1 December statement by the new board said Sonangol had failed to adjust its strategy to cope with the sharp reduction in revenue caused by the oil price crash.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa on 14 May appointed lawyer Fortune Chasi as minister of energy and power development. Chasi replaces Joram Gumbo, who was fired shortly after the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa) announced a debilitating load-shedding schedule that leaves consumers without power for up to ten hours a day. Chasi’s appointment has been welcomed by many in the energy industry, who see him as young, hardworking and up to date with new energy technologies.

In a sign of how tough market conditions still are, Ophir Energy is slashing London-based and expatriate jobs by 50% to save $10m-$12m/yr. Chief operating officer Bill Higgs will be stepping down from his role and will not be replaced. In a 12 July trading update, Ophir said H1 production was lower than expected at 11,300 boe/d, which was 1,200 boe/d below budget due to temporarily lower production from the Kerendan and Sinphuhorm gas fields in South-East Asia.

Kigoma North MP Zitto Kabwe has told an investigative committee headed by attorney-general Fredrick Werema that he does not have the names of five individuals accused of stashing over $190m in Swiss banks. Kabwe, an MP for the opposition Chadema Party that campaigns on an anti-corruption platform, previously claimed in parliament that large sums of taxpayers’ money were held in accounts in Switzerland and the Channel Islands, but that the government was not willing to recover the cash. The ‘Swiss Billions’ scandal has been much discussed in Tanzania since June 2012, when a Swiss National Bank report said the country held $196m of Tanzanian money in its accounts.

Botswana has come out as the most transparent in Africa in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2013, placing 30th out of 175 countries. This delighted the government, which said it was down to the country’s “zero tolerance” approach and the establishment of oversight institutions: the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime, the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Board and the Competition Authority and the Financial Intelligence Agency. Cape Verde was ranked 41st, Seychelles 47th, Rwanda 49th and Mauritius 52nd. Somalia came bottom, and deputy finance minister Ahmed Hassan Adan reacted angrily, saying the report was not trustworthy. “We want to see any evidence to these allegations.

The government is seeking expressions of interest from consultants to draw up a communications strategy for the executive committee implementing the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).