Yet Another Noisy Exit

Rodolfo Michelon was the Director & Controller - Mexico of Sempra Global. Michelon was also the legal representative of various Sempra subsidiary companies located in Mexico and served as a member of the board of directors of the Mexican subsidiaries.

That is until March 10, when Michelon was terminated by Sempra.

In a lawsuit (here) recently filed in California state court, Michelon claims that his termination was wrongful for many reasons, including the following:

"Sempra regularly required Michelon to transfer funds, and account for illegitimate expenditures that boiled down to bribes of government officials - everything from fraudulent trusts ostensibly to purchase fire fighting equipment for Mexican governments, to paying off local fisherman to move their operations away from Sempra facilities, to demanding remediation of accounting that falsely stated Sepmpra's assets, to the outright wiring of huge amounts of money to 'consultants' throughout Mexico. As with his other attempts to ensure he was complying with his ethical requirements as a CPA, Michelon's repeated questioning and protests of the miscellaneous frauds and bribes was met with open hostility and threats of termination. The termination of the Controller employment was not only in retaliation for Michelon's complaints, but it was also meant to keep Michelon from reporting the frauds and bribes to governmental, law enforcement officials."

Sempra Global is described (here) as "the umbrella for Sempra Energy's businesses operating in competitive energy markets. Sempra Global companies acquire, develop and operate infrastructure assets related to the production and distribution of energy, including power plants, natural gas pipelines and liquefied natural gas (LNG) receipt terminals."

Various Sempra entities are publicly traded issuers (see here).

In this San Diego Union Tribune report Sempra officials "called Michelon a disgruntled ex-employee attempting to cash in by making 'outlandishly false claims and misrepresentations' after being let go in a routine reorganization." A Sempra spokesperson said that the “company first became aware of Mr. Michelon’s claims several months ago" and that “Sempra’s board of directors ordered an independent investigation, which found Mr. Michelon’s allegations to be completely without merit.”

Michelon's "noisy exit" is the fourth such exit publicly reported over the past three months that may implicate the FCPA. See here and here for the prior posts.