The Siemens Global Operation
Here are some excerpts from a 20 Dec 08 NYT article I chanced upon while absent-mindedly clicking through the net:
Mr. Siekaczek (pronounced SEE-kah-chek) says that from 2002 to 2006 he oversaw an annual bribery budget of about $40 million to $50 million at Siemens. Company managers and sales staff used the slush fund to cozy up to corrupt government officials worldwide.
The payments, he says, were vital to maintaining the competitiveness of Siemens overseas, particularly in his subsidiary, which sold telecommunications equipment. “It was about keeping the business unit alive and not jeopardizing thousands of jobs overnight,” he said in an interview.
…
[Debevoise & Plimpton] and its partners dedicated more than 300 lawyers, forensic analysts and staff members to untangle thousands of payments across the globe, according to the court records. American investigators and the Debevoise lawyers conducted more than 1,700 interviews in 34 countries. They collected more than 100 million documents, creating special facilities in China and Germany to house records from that single investigation.
Full article here.
Bribes went to people in Venezuela, China, Iraq, Israel, Vietnam, Italy, Argentina, Nigeria, Norway and Russia. The money trail led through Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Dubai and the British Virgin Islands. There are probably more places left unmentioned by the article.
Ouch. For so many reasons.
Here’s something related. I had the benefit of a chat with a businessman in Singapore last month, one of those older men who laugh at the silly ideals of young rascals like me. He has business links to various parts of Asia and Southeast Asia. He pointed out something darkly funny. We here in Singapore are raised on the values of transparency, accountability and honest business practices. But, he said, that’s not how the world works, especially in the countries around us. Does this set our businesspeople back when they head into the other Southeast Asian countries? Should we really be judging corruption to be an irrevocably bad thing in places that depend on it for some measure of decent living?
I don’t know.
