FRANKFURT, June 14 (Reuters) – A former management board member of
Siemens AG <SIEGn.DE> has been charged with breach of trust for
alleged bribery payments made to win a project in Argentina, the Munich
State Prosecutors office said on Tuesday.
A statement said the executive, who was not named, was a member of
the Siemens board in 2000-2007 and was responsible for the Americas
business.
The disclosure came a week after Siemens said it had discovered
evidence of corruption at its business in Kuwait and had involved
authorities. [ID:nWEA5438]
In December 2008, Europe’s biggest engineering conglomerate agreed to
pay $1.4 billion to U.S. and German authorities to settle a U.S.
investigation of allegations that for years it paid bribes to win
contracts.
The Munich state prosecutor’s office said Siemens won the Argentine
state project to produce identification cards, but even though this was
stopped by the government in 2001, bribes of at least $27 million were
made to government representatives through middle men.
It said the executive and a middleman of the Argentine government
representative had a personal meeting that took place in Munich in
November 2003 and both then had agreed for a $4.7 million payment to be
covered by false contracts.
Siemens declined comment.
The Munich state prosecutor’s office said the executive was informed
in 2004 by the former head of the Siemens Argentine operations about the
existence of an illicit account with assets of 40 million euros but
failed to disclose his knowledge to headquarters and refused to help the
latter to transfer the money legally to the Siemens accounts.
(Reporting by Marilyn Gerlach; Editing by David Holmes)
