A former manager at a banknote business, part owned by Wigton's Innovia Group, has been jailed for 30 months for bribing a Nigerian official.

Peter Chapman, 54, worked for Securency when he made a series of illegal payments to an agent of Nigerian Security Printing and Minting plc. 

His aim was to secure orders for reams of polymer substrate from Securency, Southwark Crown Court in London heard.

The offences took place between January and March 2009.

The Central Bank of Nigeria wanted to print notes of three denominations on the material, manufactured by Innovia, and Chapman was “under pressure” from his bosses to secure the business.

He paid the bribes in order to speed up the process which, the court heard, would inevitably have seen Securency obtain the contract anyway.

At the time he was the regional manager for sales for Africa, with a salary of £74,160, plus commission of between 0.5 per cent and 0.7 per cent on any sales.

Chapman was convicted of four counts of making corrupt payments to a foreign official. He was found guilty of paying around $205,000 (£143,000). 

He was cleared of two counts of the same offence. 

Sentencing him to 30 months’ imprisonment, Judge Michael Grieve QC, said: “Senior management, from the managing director down, gave you the go-ahead.

“It was the prosecution case throughout that you acted with their encouragement, or at least connivance.” 

He added: “Corruption, in particular corruption of foreign government officials is a very serious global problem, as the anti-corruption summit in London highlights.” 

Chapman, who has homes in Aylesbury and Rio de Janeiro, was arrested at Heathrow Airport in April 2015, having been extradited from Brazil. 

Having already served 162 days in a Brazilian prison, and 358 in a UK custody, he is likely to avoid spending any further time in jail.

He was convicted after a joint investigation by the Serious Fraud Office and the Australian Federal Police into Securency International.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and Securency referred allegations of corruption to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) in May 2009.

The allegations were that Securency, at the time jointly owned by RBA and Innovia, paid bribes to foreign government officials via agents in order to secure contracts with certain governments in Asia and Africa for the printing of banknotes.

David Green, director of the Serious Fraud Office, said: “This has been a long, detailed investigation and a complex prosecution involving assistance from a wide range of jurisdictions.

"Crimes like this damage the UK’s commercial reputation and this conviction shows that such activity will not be tolerated.” 

Securency is now wholly owned by Innovia and trades as Innovia Security.

This is not the first time that Innovia has been embroiled in allegations of corruption.

Former managing director Bill Lowther was acquitted in 2012 in another prosecution brought by the Serious Fraud Office. He had been charged with bribing the governor of the state bank of Vietnam.