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VimpelCom to pay $795 million to resolve U.S., Dutch bribery probes

By Nate Raymond and Anthony Deutsch

NEW YORK/AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Amsterdam-based telecommunications operator VimpelCom Ltd on Thursday said it would pay $795 million (£555 million) to resolve U.S. and Dutch probes into a bribery scheme in Uzbekistan, in the second largest global anti-corruption settlement in history.

The settlement was announced in a federal court in Manhattan, where a subsidiary pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate a U.S. anti-corruption law by paying $114 million in bribes to a Uzbekistan official.

The deal was announced as the U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit seeking the forfeiture of $550 million in Swiss bank accounts tied to corrupt payments that VimpelCom and two other companies made to the official.

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That official, described as a "close relative of a high-ranking Uzbek government official," matched the description of Uzbek President Islam Karimov's daughter, Gulnara Karimova, who had been identified earlier as being at the centre of the probe.

The Justice Department said VimpelCom, Nordic telecom operator Teliasonera AB and Eastern European telecommunications group Mobile TeleSystems paid more than $800 million to shell companies controlled by the official in order to help them enter into and operate in the Uzbek telecommunications market.

VimpelCom's settlement resolved related probes by the Justice Department, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Prosecution Service of the Netherlands.

It marked a near-record for a global anti-corruption accord, behind only a 2008 settlement with Siemens AG for $1.3 billion that resolved wide-ranging bribery probes in the United States and Germany.

Scott Dresser, VimpelCom's general counsel, in court entered the guilty plea on behalf of Uzbek subsidiary Unitel LLC to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

"The company deeply regrets its actions here, and we will make sure it never happens again," he said.

Nicola Mrazek, a U.S. prosecutor, told a federal judge that the Justice Department had a "very robust, ongoing investigation into individuals" connected to the bribes.

Dutch authorities likewise said they were investigating individuals, with one man already having been arrested in November.

VimpelCom, whose biggest shareholders are Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman's LetterOne and Norway's Telenor, in November took a $900 million provision to resolve the investigations.