Siemens bribed officials in Bangladesh

German industrial giant Siemens agreed to pay nearly one billion euros ($1.4 billion) to US and German authorities on Monday to settle a sprawling corruption scandal that also involves allegations of bribing public officials in Bangladesh.
From the mid-1990s until last year, units of the company paid kickbacks and bribes to win contracts from Iraq's government in the United Nations oil-for-food programme and for projects including commuter rail in Venezuela, mobile-phone networks in Bangladesh, power plants in Israel and traffic-control systems in Russia, Bloomberg reports.
Siemens set up a network in Bangladesh for state-run mobile operator TeleTalk in early 2003.
Siemens Chief Executive Officer Peter Loescher had acknowledged that the legal problems could have proved far more costly had it gone to court, AFP reports.
He said he was "happy and relieved to have negotiated this fantastic outcome in record time".
"This is for everyone at Siemens the best Christmas present," he told Tuesday's issue of the mass-market daily Bild.
Under the German settlement, prosecutors said Siemens would pay 395 million euros, on top of a fine of 201 million euros last year over charges it had run an elaborate bribe-and-kickback system to secure foreign contracts.
Under a separate US court settlement Monday, Siemens pleaded guilty to corruption charges and agreed to pay 800 million dollars to avoid prosecution.
The group was fined 450 million dollars and agreed to a 350-million-dollar settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to court documents.
The scandal could have cost the company even more dearly, however, with speculation running rampant for months that the SEC alone could levy fines of several billion euros.
The 161-year-old conglomerate with activities from nuclear power stations to trains and light bulbs has acknowledged that up to 1.3 billion euros may have been used illegally to win foreign contracts.
Siemens, which employs some 400,000 people worldwide, found in an exhaustive internal investigation that the practice was widespread across its numerous divisions.
US authorities said Siemens had used slush funds, off-book accounting and delivered suitcases full of cash to bribe officials to secure contracts in Argentina, Bangladesh, Iraq and Venezuela.
"Today's filings make clear that for much of its operations across the globe, bribery was nothing less than standard operating procedure for Siemens," Acting US Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich said in a statement.
Prosecutors have investigated around 300 people in connection with the affair and US authorities refused to rule out charges against Siemens executives.
"This investigation continues," Friedrich told a news conference when asked if some company officials could be indicted.
The case far surpassed the amount of money involved in similar corruption cases prosecuted by US authorities, said Linda Chatman Thomsen, director of the enforcement division of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
"This pattern of bribery by Siemens was unprecedented in scale and geographic reach," she said, saying the company had sought to bribe officials in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas.
The German group recently took provisions of one billion euros against potential fines in both Germany and the United States.
Since it erupted in late 2006, the scandal led to the resignation of a string of top managers, including chief executive Klaus Kleinfeld and his long-term predecessor and chairman of the board, Heinrich von Pierer.
With details from AFP and Bloomberg