TWO Britons were remanded in custody by a Norwegian court yesterday for their alleged roles in a corruption case involving Norway's state owned company Statoil. Statoil took over Aran Energy in a £200 million deal last year.
An official at the Stavanger city court said the men, who were detained last Friday, would be kept in solitary confinement and not allowed mail or visits for two weeks initially while the police investigation continued.
"They are suspected of gross breach of trust or conspiracy to commit gross breach of trust," he said.
Police said one suspect was a Statoil construction manager and "the other a manager with offshore consultancy firm Idavoll. Neither was named, in keeping with the Norwegian practice of not identifying suspects until convicted.
Statoil spokesman, Mr John Ove Lindoe, said Statoil had used Idavoll's services since 1988 and had awarded it natural gas pipeline, contracts in the North Sea worth £7.6 million.
It is the second such case to hit Statoil in the last few years. In 1995, a former Statoil engineer was sentenced to two years in prison by a Norwegian court after being found guilty of accepting bribes from German engineering firm Mannesmann Handel.
