The Navy announced Tuesday that it has censured three admirals for ethics violations as part of a historic corruption scandal that has already tarred several other high-ranking officers and is threatening to spread further through the ranks.

Navy officials said the three admirals improperly accepted “extravagant dinners” and other gifts from Leonard Glenn Francis, a Malaysian defense contractor who made a fortune by supplying Navy vessels at Asian ports until his arrest in 2013.

The three officers — Rear Adm. Michael Miller, Rear Adm. Terry Kraft and Rear Adm. David Pimpo — were sanctioned for misconduct committed in 2006 and 2007, when they were assigned to the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier strike group.

The admirals’ actions surfaced during a long-running federal bribery investigation into Francis’s company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia. Prosecutors with the Justice Department decided not to press criminal charges against the three admirals but referred the cases to the Navy for further review.

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Navy Secretary Ray Mabus issued letters of censure to the three admirals this week after a four-star admiral, John Richardson, spent months reviewing the cases and recommended that they be disciplined.

“All Navy officers, particularly our senior leadership in positions of unique trust and responsibility, must uphold and be held to the highest standards of personal and professional behavior,” Mabus said in a statement. He criticized the admirals for “poor judgment and a failure of leadership.”

The censures will effectively end the careers of all three officers and leave a stain on their record.

The Navy said each of the admirals will retire. First, however, each must face a review to determine whether they should be stripped of their stars and forced to retire at a lower rank with a lesser pension.