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France's largest oil producer on Wednesday agreed with the US Department of Justice to enter a deferred prosecution agreement and pay a $245.2m fine to resolve three charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Total will also give up $153m of illegal profit in a related civil settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The criminal penalty is the fourth-largest under the FCPA, an anti-bribery law, justice department spokesperson Peter Carr said.
US authorities said that between 1995 and 2004, Total paid about $60m in bribes to induce an Iranian government official to help the company obtain lucrative development rights in three oil and gas fields.
The US criminal case will be dropped after three years if Total complies with the deferred prosecution agreement, which calls for it to retain an independent compliance monitor.
But the affair is not over, as a French prosecutor said Total and its Chief Executive Christophe de Margerie should face trial for allegedly corrupting foreign public officials over contracts with Iran in the 1990s and early 2000s.
The prosecutor also said de Margerie should face trial for misuse of company funds.
A Total spokesperson confirmed that the company had been notified of the Paris prosecutor's recommendation and said the company and de Margerie would demonstrate in any trial that their behaviour had been legal.
US authorities said Total has American depositary shares that trade on the New York Stock Exchange, and qualifies as an "issuer" that could face sanctions under the FCPA.
Coordinated action
According to papers filed with a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, Total funneled the illegal payments mainly to Swiss bank accounts designated by two unnamed intermediaries who acted at the behest of the Iranian official.
One intermediary worked at a Swiss private bank, and the other was a company in the British Virgin Islands, the court papers show.
"We announce the first coordinated action by French and US law enforcement in a major foreign bribery case," Acting US Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman said in a statement.
"Our two countries are working more closely today than ever before to combat corporate corruption, and Total, which bought business through bribes, now faces the criminal consequences across two continents," Raman added.
Carr said the largest criminal penalty imposed under the FCPA is the $450m that German engineering company Siemens agreed to pay in 2008, as part of an overall $800m settlement with US authorities.
Total had flagged a possible settlement in an SEC filing last year when it took a €316m ($409m) charge against its accounts, a relatively small sum for a company that makes billions of dollars in profit every quarter.
Talks between US authorities and Total, Western Europe's third-largest oil company, had begun in 2010.
A French investigating magistrate will decide whether a trial is to be held for the outspoken, mustachioed 61-year-old de Margerie, whose mandate as chief executive is scheduled to expire in 2015.
Total's chief is a well-known figure in international oil circles who was in charge of the company's Middle East division at the time the alleged wrongdoing began. He and the company have been under investigation in France since 2006.
