most environmentally responsible company out of 120 oil, gas, and mining companies involved in resource extraction north of the Arctic Circle in the Arctic Environmental Responsibility Index (AERI). According to a 2021 study, Total personnel were aware about the role that their products played in global warming as early as 1971, as well as throughout the 1980s. Despite this awareness, the company promoted doubt regarding the science of global warming by the late 1980s, and ultimately settled on a position in the late 1990s of publicly accepting climate science, while still promoting doubt and trying to delay climate action. Bribery Total has been accused of bribery on multiple occasions. Total is being implicated in a bribe commission scandal which is currently emerging in Malta. It has emerged that Total had told Maltese agents that it would not be interested in doing business with them unless their team included George Farrugia, who is under investigation in the procurement scandal. George Farrugia has recently been given a presidential pardon in exchange for information about this scandal. Enemalta, Malta's energy supplier, swiftly barred Total and its agents, Trafigura from bidding and tenders. An investigation is currently underway and three people have been arraigned On 16 December 2008, the managing director of the Italian division of Total, Lionel Levha, and ten other executives were arrested by the public Prosecutor's office of Potenza, Italy, for a corruption charge of €15 million to undertake the oilfield in Basilicata on contract. Also arrested was the local deputy of Partito Democratico Salvatore Margiotta and an Italian entrepreneur. In 2010, Total was accused of bribing Iraqi officials during former president Saddam Hussein's regime to secure oil supplies. A United Nations report later revealed that Iraqi officials had received bribes from oil companies to secure contracts worth over $10bn. On 26 February 2016, the Paris Court of Appeals considered Total guilty and ordered the company to pay a fine of €750,000 for corrupting Iraqi civil servants. The court's ruling overturns an earlier acquittal in the case. In 2013, a case was settled that concerned charges that Total bribed an Iranian official with $60 million, which they documented as a "consulting charge," and which unfairly gave them access to Iran's Sirri A and Sirri E oil and gas fields. The bribery gave them a competitive advantage, earning them an estimated $150 million in profits. The Securities Exchange Commission and the Department