A court in Paris fined on Friday France’s oil and gas major Total with US$572,330 (500,000 euro) for having bribed public officials in 1997 in exchange for securing oil and gas contracts in Iran. Total has been accused of paying US$30 million in bribes under the cover of a consultancy contract to obtain a deal to develop the gas field South Pars in Iran, according to Reuters. Two decades after the 1997 bribery case, in 2017, the French company became the first supermajor to have returned to Iran after the previous sanctions on Tehran were lifted, with the multi-billion-dollar South Pars 11 gas development project. But after the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal this year, Total said in May that it would not be in a position to continue the South Pars 11 gas project and would have to unwind all related operations before November 4, 2018, […]