ABB Ltd

ABB’s Kusile record is not only a bribery case or a repeat-offender headline. It is a test of whether a multinational supplier can make every high-risk subcontractor and payment on a public infrastructure project independently explainable before funds move. The record describes confidential tender information, politically connected influence, subcontractors with qualification or service concerns, an advance payment, variation orders, false accounting and control failures across local and group boundaries. It also contains several legally different outcomes: a US guilty plea by ABB South Africa, a US deferred prosecution agreement with ABB Ltd, a separate SEC order, a South African punitive-reparations settlement, a Swiss penalty order, earlier civil recovery, and historical FCPA resolutions. Keeping those instruments separate is the beginning of accountability. The operating objective is to connect vendor identity, ownership, capability, scope, price, deliverables, approval, accounting and public-official contact in evidence that no commercial sponsor can bypass.