Petrofac’s woes deepen

Shares in the oil-services firm have plunged after an investigation into corruption took a troubling turn. Alex Rankine reports.

Shares in the oil-services firm have plunged after an investigationinto corruption took a troubling turn. Alex Rankine reports.

Shares in Petrofac have tumbled to their lowest level since the global financial crisis after the oilfield services provider announced the suspension of its chief operating officer Marwan Chedid as part of an ongoing Serious Fraud Office (SFO) probe. Chedid and group chief executive Ayman Asfari were both questioned under caution last month as part of a wide-reaching SFO investigation into bribery, corruption and money laundering at Monaco-based Unaoil. Petrofac has disclosed that it engaged Unaoil for consultancy services in Kazakhstan between 2002 and 2009, but says that an independent review conducted last summer "did not find evidence confirming the payment of bribes". However, the SFO has now rejected the findings of the review and says that it does not consider Petrofac to have cooperated with its investigation.

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Markets editor

Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019. 

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere. 

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful. 

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.