Ex-London Mining executives plead not guilty to corruption charges

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Two former executives at London Mining and a consultant have entered not guilty pleas to corruption charges relating to the now-collapsed miner’s business in Sierra Leone, seven years after the UK probe began.

David ‘Graeme’ Hossie, former chief executive of London Mining, former chief financial officer Rachel Rhodes and former international business consultant Ariel Armon all entered their pleas at Southwark Crown Court on Friday.

Hossie, 58, and Rhodes, 52, face two counts of conspiring to “give monetary payments to public officials or other agents of the government of Sierra Leone” as inducements or rewards for showing favour to the business, according to the indictment. The first count relates to alleged conduct between January 2009 and March 2012 and the second count to a period between August 2010 and the end of December 2014.

Armon, 54, was charged with one count in relation to the same offence between 2010 and 2014. The trio are accused of using the corrupt payments to advance London Mining’s “commercial mining interests in Sierra Leone”, the indictment said.

The Serious Fraud Office opened its investigation into the company in 2016, and charged the defendants in June. London mining, which had its headquarters in the capital, went into administration in 2014 amid an Ebola outbreak and falling iron ore prices.

The company also had operations in Brazil, China, Colombia, Greenland and Saudi Arabia.

All three defendants appeared in person at Southwark to enter their pleas. A trial is scheduled to begin in January 2025.

The hearing is one of the first since the new SFO director, Nick Ephgrave QPM, took office last week. As the first non-lawyer to run the agency in its 35-year history, the legal industry is watching Ephgrave closely to see how his approach may diverge from his predecessors’.

The former senior Metropolitan Police chief took over from Lisa Osofsky, a dual US-UK citizen who previously worked at Goldman Sachs and the FBI.

Today’s pleas come after the SFO charged four individuals with fraud last month in connection with the collapse of UK café chain Patisserie Valerie in 2019, in a separate high-profile case.

The group, which includes the company’s former chief financial officer, will appear in court this month for allegedly conspiring to inflate the cash in Patisserie Holdings’ balance sheets and annual reports from 2015 to 2018.