2005 articles

There seems no doubt about what The Guardian are saying. Hugh Grant, Chairman, President and CEO of Monsanto was in charge of Indonesia during the first two years of the corruption scandal.
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Eco sounding
John Vidal
The Guardian Wednesday January 19, 2005
http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,7843,1392977,00.html

Fines for favours

Monsanto should be cheering. Latest figures - which are always debatable - suggest that global plantings of GM crops increased last year to more than 200m acres, which should mean heaps more profits. But the company still cannot shrug off its reputation for corruption. This was not helped when the US department of justice recently fined it $1m (about £535,000) for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Monsanto had been found to have bribed more than 140 current and former Indonesian government officials and their families by an amount totalling more than $700,000 (GBP374,000) between 1997 and 2002. The cash was paid to allow it to develop GM crops in the country.

The plot thickens

So who was in charge of Monsanto in Indonesia at the time? It seems, from the corporation's website, that one Hugh Grant was head of the Asia Pacific region from 1995-98. Grant, a Scotsman, is now president and chief executive of the company. He is also an international advisory board member of Scottish Enterprise, a UK government quango, which this week was being urged to sack him.