Glencore Energy UK Ltd will pay the equivalent of US$313.7 million after a court found that the company paid $29 million in bribes to state-owned companies across Africa in order to gain preferential access to the continent’s oil reserves, the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) reported Thursday.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission, in a 200-page memo, outlined measures intended to increase transparency of payments made by US companies to foreign governments that are used to secure contracts in the oil, natural gas, or mining sectors, but some argue that it will not go far enough. 

Six so-called jade scavengers died Sunday after a 150-foot cliff wall collapsed at a mine in Myanmar’s northern Kachin state, where local insurgents are fighting a war against government forces that is partly financed by the jade industry.

More than US$ 750 million in mining revenues disappeared from the coffers of the Democratic Republic of the Congo over a three-year period, according to a report released Friday.