ALSTOM 
LONDON/PARIS (Reuters) - Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has charged a British subsidiary of French energy equipment firm Alstom (>> Alstom) with bribing officials to secure a power contract, making it the second Alstom unit to face UK charges this year.
Monday's charges are the latest in a series of international bribery investigations into Alstom, which has suffered a drop in orders for power equipment since the financial crisis and has had to sell most of its energy arm to U.S. giant General Electric (>> General Electric Company) raise cash.
According to the UK court documents seen by Reuters on Monday, Alstom Power Ltd is alleged to have handed money to officials at a state-controlled Lithuanian energy company over eight years in order to secure a contract to supply burners to a power plant in Elektrenai, west of the capital Vilnius.
The alleged payments to officials at AB Lietuvos Elektrine, disguised as consultancy payments, were made between February 2002 and March 2010, the documents showed.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled on Jan. 5 at Southwark Crown Court in London, the SFO said in an emailed statement.
A spokeswoman for Alstom said the company does not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.
The charges, against the Alstom unit and two individuals, are the first the SFO has filed against the power unit, which makes turbines for power plants and is being taken over by GE as part of a 12.35 billion euro (9.69 billion pounds) deal.
In September, however, the SFO accused the British subsidiary of Alstom's train-making unit of paying $8.5 million in bribes over a six-year period to win transport contracts in India, Poland and Tunisia.
The French company has in recent years been the target of investigations in Switzerland, Brazil and the United States. It is expected to reach a deal within days with U.S. authorities to settle claims there that it bribed officials to secure power contracts in India, China and Indonesia.
A person close to the matter last week put that likely settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice at $700 million, which would make it the largest criminal fine levied by the United States for foreign bribery.
Alstom CEO Patrick Kron told shareholders on Friday that the settlement talks were in the final stages and that the DOJ would likely require Alstom, not GE, to foot the bill.
The warning unsettled Alstom investors, who had assumed that GE, which is taking over the power operations' liabilities as part of the deal, would be covering any costs related to Alstom's various bribery investigations.
(Reporting by Nishant Kumar in London and Natalie Huet in Paris; Editing by Clara Ferreira Marques)
