Control Components exec extradited to face U.S. bribery charges
An Italian citizen who worked as an overseas executive for an Orange County valve company has been extradited to the United States to face international bribery charges alongside five other company leaders, federal authorities said Tuesday.
Flavio Ricotti is one of six executives at Control Components Inc. who are suspected of paying bribes to get contracts with private and state-owned foreign companies, according to a 16-count indictment in 2009.
Ricotti, a 49-year-old resident of Bientina, Italy, was arrested in February in Frankfurt, Germany. He was transported to the U.S. on Friday, said Laura Sweeney, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Justice Department.
The Rancho Santa Margarita company, better known as CCI, pleaded guilty in July 2009 to paying bribes to officials at state-owned companies in China, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates to win deals that brought the firm about $55 million in profit from 2003 to 2007, Sweeney said.
CCI, which designs and manufactures service control valves for use globally in the oil and gas industries as well as at nuclear and other power plants, paid a court-ordered $18.2-million fine within a week of its guilty plea, Sweeney said. Officials at CCI could not be reached for comment.
Ricotti served six years as the company’s head of sales for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He is scheduled to stand trial Nov. 2 along with former CCI Chief Executive Stuart Carson and former executives Hong Carson, Paul Cosgrove, David Edmonds and Han Yong Kim.
Two other former CCI executives, Richard Morlok and Mario Covino, pleaded guilty to bribery charges in early 2009. As a part of their plea deals, both men agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. They are scheduled to be sentenced in February 2011.
