Renowned publisher Macmillon has been ordered to pay more than £11 million following a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation into claims of bribery in South Sudan (you can view the full SFO report here).

The company admitted that a representative of Macmillan Education made “improper and unauthorised payments” to local officials in Sudan connected with an unsuccessful bid for a multimillion-pound contract to print English language teaching and school curriculum materials.

The tender was part of a $46 million project to develop the school curriculum, train thousands of teachers and build 100 schools.

Millions of dollars of international aid have been pumped into south Sudan through a multi-donor trust fund managed by the World Bank, established in 2006 to fund post-conflict reconstruction after two decades of civil war.

The World Bank reported that an agent for Macmillan had made an attempt “to pay a sum of money with the view in mind of persuading the award of a World Bank funded tender to supply educational materials in Southern Sudan”. Macmillan has been banned from World Bank contracts for six years and must also pay £27,000 of the SFO’s costs. 

Macmillan said it “deeply regretted” what had happened. “Fortunately, it has been established that these issues were confined to a limited part of our education business in East and West Africa,” said Macmillan chief executive Annette Thomas.

The Macmillan case predated the new Bribery Act, which only came into force on 1 July this year, but it demonstrates a hardening of approach by the SFO to enforcement. Under the Bribery Act, commercial organisations can be held liable for bribes paid by those acting on their behalf anywhere in the world. One key point is that Macmillan self-reported the bribery allegations, which enabled it to avoid criminal charges.

Founded by the grandfather of former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, the company built its reputation on big name Victorian authors such as Rudyard Kipling and Lewis Carrol. Now owned by a German publishing group, it has grown a very successful textbook printing business in recent decades.