A FATHER and son who bribed foreign officials to win contracts for their printing company have been sentenced.

Security printing company Smith & Ouzman, in Eastbourne, gave £400,000 in backhanders to officials in Kenya and Mauritania for deals worth £2.26 million to make ballot papers.

Company chairman Christopher Smith, 72, and his son Nicholas Smith, 43, sales and marketing director, targeted Kenya just after the 2007 political and humanitarian crisis, which was sparked by election malpractice and cost 1,300 lives and displaced 600,000 people. Both have since resigned.

Campaigners said the corrupt payments damaged young democracies and "is to dance on the graves" of those killed in the violence in Kenya.

Today (Thursday) at Southwark Crown Court, Nicholas Smith, of Cavendish Avenue, Eastbourne, was jailed for three years for three counts of agreeing to corrupt payments.

In an "act of mercy" by Judge David Higgins, his father, of Mill Lane, Lewes, was given an 18-month suspended sentence for two counts of agreeing to corrupt payments. He must also do 250 hours of unpaid work.

It is the first time a British company has been found guilty of bribing foreign agents.

The firm, which specialises in security documents such as ballot papers and certificates, has been in Eastbourne since 1955 and started expanding into Africa in the 1970s.

Between November 2006 and December 2010, it lined the pockets of officials to land lucrative contracts in the politically troubled countries.

They bribed officials at the Interim Independent Electoral Commission of Kenya, the Kenyan National Examination Council, and the Mauritanian Ministry of the Interior.

These tax-payer funded election bodies then paid inflated prices for the printing work.

Jude Higgins said the pair, who were found guilty after a trial ending in December, committed a "premeditated, pre-planned, sophisticated and very serious" crime.

He said: "In short, your behaviour was cynical, deplorable and deeply anti-social and suggest, at least in this context, moral turpitude."

Both men have been disqualified from being company directors for six years.

In a statement, Smith & Ouzman said the firm “apologise unreservedly" and that it had learned lessons and imposed new “industry-leading” anti-bribery measures.

It continued: “The company co-operated fully with the SFO throughout its lengthy investigation. The extent of our co-operation was acknowledged in court on a number of occasions and has not been disputed.”