Pension Fund Sues Alcoa Board Over Alleged Bribes
Posted on: Friday, 9 May 2008, 00:00 CDT
By Joe Napsha
An ironworker pension fund has sued Alcoa Inc.'s board of directors, claiming it failed to stop the aluminum giant from wasting millions of dollars on bribing officials of Bahrain and its aluminum company over the past decade.
The Hawaiian Structural Ironworkers Pension Trust Fund filed the shareholder lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh on behalf of Alcoa Inc. against Chief Executive Alain J. Belda and his apparent successor, chief operating officer Klaus Kleinfeld. Sixteen corporate officers and board members also were named, as were the two men accused of masterminding the Bahrain bribery scheme, Alcoa employee William J. Rice and Victor Dahdaleh, an agent representing Alcoa.
The ironworker's pension fund seeks unspecified damages and punitive damages, according to the 74-page lawsuit. Alcoa, the world's third-largest aluminum company, has its corporate offices on Pittsburgh's North Shore.
Alcoa spokesman Kevin Lowery said he was not aware of the lawsuit but maintained that the company's investigation into the allegations found no wrongdoing by Alcoa employees or agents.
The five-count lawsuit takes place as Alcoa prepares for its annual shareholder meeting, which will be held today in Oakland.
The shareholder lawsuit stems from a civil lawsuit filed by Aluminum Bahrain B.S.C., the government-run aluminum company that claimed in a lawsuit that Alcoa bribed government officials and officials of the Aluminum Bahrain. That February lawsuit, in turn, spawned a criminal investigation into the allegations by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The pension fund's lawsuit wants sweeping changes to Alcoa's board to strengthen its supervision of operations, to permit more shareholder input on the board and to set up an anti-corruption and bribery committee. The suit wants shareholders to nominate three candidates to the board, and wants to ban any Alcoa official targeted in the criminal investigation from deciding whether Alcoa should plead guilty to any criminal charge.
U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose in March terminated that lawsuit after the Justice Department intervened, fearing that obtaining documents and interviewing witnesses in the case might jeopardize its investigation.
(c) 2008 Tribune-Review/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Tribune-Review/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
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