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rench industrial giant Alstom SA has pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a record fine of US$722 million to the US in a move to end allegations of bribes to win billions of power-plant contracts overseas, including in Indonesia.

The firm'€™s guilty plea for breaching the Foreign Practices Act, which declares bribery of foreign government officials for business illegal, was processed by the federal court in Connecticut, where one of the firm'€™s US subsidiaries '€” Alstom Power Inc. '€” operates.

The US Justice Department said Monday that Alstom falsified its records to hide the payment and handed over tens of millions of dollars in bribes to secure $4 billion in projects in Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Bahamas from roughly 2000 to 2011, the Associated Press reported.

'€œAlstom'€™s corruption scheme was sustained over more than a decade and across several continents,'€ deputy attorney James Cole said. '€œIt was astonishing in its breadth, its brazenness and its worldwide consequences.'€

The scheme operated through middlemen, who the firm hired as consultants, but who in fact acted as intermediaries to channel the bribes and ensure its position in the projects, federal prosecutors said.

Alstom, which produces trains and equipment for the power and energy industries, gained profits of about $300 million from the scheme, according to Bloomberg.

The prosecutors said that in one case in Indonesia, an Alstom executive told an employee in an email that '€œone of the engineering chaps'€ who had influence on the outcome of a particular project was involved in a new project and '€œkeeps reminding the boys that we owe him something'€.

'€œThis issue needs to be sorted out ASAP to ensure proper support,'€ the executive wrote as quoted by court papers.

The Justice Department also noted that in Indonesia, the company had bribed a high-ranking legislator as well as top officials at state-owned electricity company PT PLN. In mid-April the Jakarta Corruption Court sentenced Izedrik Emir Moeis, a politician from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), now a ruling party, to three years in prison for accepting a $423,985 bribe from Alstom.

The kickbacks were provided to Emir in his capacity as a legislator at House of Representatives Commission VII overseeing energy, which then paved the way for the firm to obtain victory in a $268 million coal-fired power plant in Tarahan, Lampung, in 2004.

Alstom, which led the consortium for the project funded by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), offered him an overseas trip in 2002 to several places, such as Washington DC, the US and Paris, France, with free accommodation and other amenities, including adult entertainment.

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) is now further investigating the bribery case to scrutinize other suspects.

Alstom CEO Patrick Kron said in a statement posted on its website that the firm would '€œcontinue its efforts to ensure that business is conducted in a responsible way, consistent with the highest ethical standards'€.

In addition to the punishment from the US, earlier this week a unit of Alstom and two employees were also charged by the Serious Fraud Office in the UK with bribing officials from 2002 through part of 2010, Reuters reported.