PARIS/NEW YORK (Reuters) - French bank Societe Generale (SOGN.PA) will pay more than $1 billion to resolve criminal and civil charges in the United States and France for bribing Gaddafi-era Libyan officials and manipulating the Libor interest rate benchmark, U.S. authorities said on Monday. "The resolution announced today ... sends a powerful message to financial institutions that engage in corruption and manipulation in the financial markets that they will be held accountable," said Richard Donoghue, the US attorney in Brooklyn, New York, who made the joint announcement with other law enforcement officials. Société Générale itself announced earlier that it reached agreements to settle the Libya investigations as well as a separate US investigation into its alleged rigging of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) interest rates. “We regret these past misconducts, which are contrary to our values and ethical standards that led to these settlements,” Frédéric Oudéa, chief executive of Societe Generale, said in the bank’s statement, calling the settlement “an important step for the Bank.”

Between 2004 and 2009, SocGen paid more than $90 million in bribes through a Libyan broker to secure 14 investments by Libyan state-owned financial institutions, the Justice Department said.
Société Générale agrees to pay a total fine of $1.3 billion in cases of bribing Libyan government officials and manipulation of the Libor interbank rate.