Och-Ziff Capital Management, OZ Management, and Daniel Och agreed to settle federal charges that it paid tens of millions of dollars in bribes through intermediaries to African government officials.  The two companies will pay $412 million in criminal penalties, disgorgement, interest and civil penalties;  Daniel Och, the firm's Chairman and CEO, will pay $2.2 million in disgorgement and interest. The infraction doesn’t affect his ability to run the company.  Och-Ziff will also be required to retain a monitor who will overee the firm's implementation of a corporate compliance program.

Och-Ziff, the largest publicly-traded U.S. hedge fund, with $39 billion under management, will finalize as early as Thursday a deferred-prosecution agreement with the Justice Department and a civil settlement with the SEC.  An African subsidiary is expected to enter a guilty plea to foreign bribery charges in a Brooklyn, NY, courtroom Thursday afternoon.  Under the deal, Och-Ziff will accept responsibility for bribing high-level government officials for business in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya and several other African countries.

The penalty will be one of the largest-ever foreign-bribery settlements, and criminal foreign-bribery case is the first against a major Wall Street firm after a 5-year investigation that stemmed from a probe by authorities into the attempts by U.S. financial firms to profit from vast natural-resources wealth in developing countries at risk for corruption.

For further details, go to the SEC Complaint.