Alstom Nearing $700 mln U.S. Bribery Settlement

Alstom is close to settling a bribery case with the U.S. Justice Department for $700 million, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

A settlement could be announced as early as next week, the newswire service added.

An Alstom spokeswoman said the company does not comment on ongoing proceedings. The Justice Department could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Justice Department has evidence that a former Alstom executive tried to bribe officials to secure power projects in Indonesia, India and China, according to court filings seen by Reuters earlier this year.

Alstom's power turbines unit has been under pressure over the past year, hit by a drop in orders, a cash crunch and the threat of hefty fines from several bribery probes.

Alstom agreed in June to sell most of that power business to General Electric to focus instead on its smaller rail arm. The deal will be put to the vote of Alstom shareholders on Friday and is expected to close in the first half of 2015.

The U.S. probe into Alstom initially focused on a $118 million contract to provide services at a power plant on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The contract, known as the Tarahan project and completed in 2007, was part of a joint venture between Alstom and Japan's Marubeni Corp.

In March, Marubeni pleaded guilty to paying bribes to win that project and was fined $88 million.

In July, a former vice president of Alstom's U.S. unit, William Pomponi, pleaded guilty over his own role in the scheme.

Prosecutors accused him and other Alstom executives of bribing an Indonesian lawmaker and members of the state-owned electricity company to get their help in securing the contract. They concealed the bribes through payments to two purported consultants, prosecutors said.

Reporting by Natalie Huet in Paris and Aruna Viswanatha in Washington