Flavio Ricotti, Foreign Bribery, California 2010

Flavio Ricotti, a former executive of Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif.-based valve company Control Components Inc. (CCI), has pleaded guilty to his participation in a conspiracy to secure contracts by paying bribes to officials of foreign state-owned companies as well as officers and employees of foreign and domestic private companies.

The guilty plea was announced by Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney André Birotte Jr. of the Central District of California.

Ricotti, 49, of Bientina, Italy, was previously arrested on Feb. 14, 2010, in Frankfurt, Germany, and subsequently extradited to the United States.

Ricotti pleaded guilty yesterday before U.S. District Judge James V. Selna in Santa Ana, Calif., to a one-count superseding information charging him with conspiring to make corrupt payments to foreign government officials, and officers and employees of private companies in several countries, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and the Travel Act.

According to court documents, CCI designed and manufactured service control valves for use in the nuclear, oil and gas, and power generation industries worldwide. From 2001 through 2007, Ricotti was CCI’s director and then vice-president of sales for Europe, Africa and the Middle East (EAME).

In connection with his guilty plea, Ricotti admitted that he conspired with other CCI employees to offer a payment to an official of Saudi Aramco, a Saudi Arabian state-owned oil company, in connection with attempting to obtain a valve contract for CCI in 2003.

Ricotti also admitted to conspiring with other CCI employees to make a payment to an employee of a private company so that the employee would assist in awarding to CCI a valve contract in Qatar. Ricotti admitted that the benefit conferred on CCI as a result of the corrupt payments with which he was directly involved was more than $400,000 but less than $1 million.

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