Australian wheat exporter AWB has agreed to pay shareholders almost $A40 million in an out-of-court settlement, in a case dating back to the United Nations Oil-for-Food program kickback scandal.
The ABC reports the shareholders had argued the company should have disclosed kickbacks which it made to Saddam Hussein's regime, in contravention of UN sanctions.
When an official inquiry into the scandal took place in 2006, the company's value plummeted.
Up to 1,000 institutional and retail investors took the wheat exporter to the Federal Court in a class action.
They claimed the company had been involved in misleading and deceptive conduct by not disclosing the information to the stock market.
The settlement was secured without any without formal admissions from AWB, although last week the company admitted for the first time it was aware payments were being made to the Iraqi regime.
It denied that the information was market sensitive, or that it needed to be disclosed to shareholders, the ABC says.
