SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) ― A judge on Thursday ordered U.S. computer giant Hewlett-Packard to pay $58.8 million for bribing Moscow government officials to win a big-money contract with Russia’s prosecutor general’s office.

Northern California U.S. District Judge Lowell Jensen hit HP with the fine after the company pleaded guilty to violating antibribery and accounting provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a release.

According to a negotiated plea bargain, executives in an HP Russia subsidiary created a multi-million-dollar slush fund, from which money was used to bribe Russian officials who awarded the company a $45 million contract with the Office of the Prosecutor General of Russia.

“Hewlett Packard’s Russia subsidiary used millions of dollars in bribes from a secret slush fund to secure a lucrative government contract,” principal deputy assistant attorney general Marshall Miller of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in a release.

“Even more troubling was that the government contract up for sale was with Russia’s top prosecutor’s office,” he said.

The plea deal came as part of an agreement by HP in April to pay a total of $108 million to settle investigations that it paid bribes to win public contracts in Russia, Poland and Mexico. The settlement covers criminal and civil investigations under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to a statement from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. According to authorities, the California company’s subsidiary in Russia paid more than $2 million in bribes through agents and various shell companies, using two sets of books and secret spreadsheets to keep track of affairs.