FRENCH power and transport transnational Alstom has agreed to settle for $772 million (£496m) charges that it bribed foreign officials for lucrative projects, the US Department of Justice said on Monday.

Federal prosecutors said Alstom falsified records and paid tens of millions of dollars in bribes for obtaining more than $4 billion (£2.6bn) of projects in countries including Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Bahamas.

The bribes were funnelled through middlemen hired as consultants and who were referred to in internal documents by code names such as “Mr Geneva” and “Mr Paris,” officials said.

“Alstom’s corruption scheme was sustained over more than a decade across several continents,” said Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

“It was astonishing in its breadth, its brazenness and its worldwide consequences.”

The Department of Justice said the scheme relied on the middlemen, whose real duty was to facilitate bribes and secure projects.

The company’s guilty plea to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was entered in federal court in Connecticut.

Alstom Power and Alstom Grid have both made deferred-prosecution agreements that will be in effect for three years, the company said.

Alstom’s Swiss subsidiary also pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the Act.

In addition, five individuals, including four former executives working for Alstom and its subsidiaries, have already been charged in connection with bribery-related schemes.

Prosecutors said that it was only after individual executives were criminally charged that the company began co-operating.