At Siemens, Bribery Was Just a Line Item

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21siemens.html?pagewanted=all

by jderick • 18 years ago

46 12 18 years ago

gruseom• 18 years ago

There are some amazing statements in here:

"Bribery was Siemens’s business model," said Uwe Dolata, the spokesman for the association of federal criminal investigators in Germany

Before 1999, bribes were deductible as business expenses under the German tax code

To handle the business side of bribery, the executives turned to Mr. Siekaczek, a man renowned within the company for his personal honesty

ckinnan• 18 years ago

The deductible bribe was true in much of Europe until the mid 1990s, not just Germany. The US pushed them to change the laws.

greyman• 18 years ago

I would like to ask - is Siemens somehow unique in doing this? In the region where I live, from unofficial sources of course, I heard this is a very common practice when a company wants to win a contract...especially government one.

ardit33• 18 years ago

it is kinda of a sham when EU countries go around and tell less developed countries to "curb their corruption", while their darling corporates are a major contribution to global corruption, and that has been allowed for so long.

kirse• 18 years ago

I especially could not stand the EU vs. Microsoft case where those jackasses heaped on tons of fines to basically siphon a few billion dollars away from a US corporation.

As much as I know MS has their issues with anti-trust, boy did that piss me off.

anthonyrubin• 18 years ago

In the US we just call it lobbying and campaign contributions.

diN0bot• 18 years ago

must be nytimes member to read this article.

matthavener• 18 years ago

check bugmenot.com for a workaround

h34t• 18 years ago

Bravo to the investigation team.

I started doing international business in 2003 when I was 20, and this article says it like it is. I'm really happy to see that people are working hard for institutional change, and the media is noticing. Articles like this put cracks in my cynical shell.

Just like prostitution is a line item in business in Bangkok (In 2005 I was the single white male in a group of asian businessmen recruiting Thai workers for a foreign labour contract, and before almost every dinner the host would bring a dozen girls out and ask us to pick one to be our 'companion' for the evening -- totally standard practice which I've since seen all over Asia), and mispricing on invoices is standard practice almost everywhere too (my first-ever international transaction was from Guatemala, and the shipment came with a commercial invoice of 10% of the real purchase price, to evade taxes, and I didn't even ask for this or know they were going to do it), money-under-the-table-to-government has dramatic, massive consequences for people everywhere, especially in the developing world. But it mostly goes unseen and unmentioned, for obvious reasons.

For those so inclined, Raymond Baker wrote a really good tome on this called "Capitalism's Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-Market System".

markdionne• 18 years ago

The article failed to mention that Siemens' auditors, KPMG, were also implicated and that they are being dropped by Siemens.

ars• 18 years ago

Who cares about the payer of a bribe, what about the recipient? That's far more important.

At Siemens, Bribery Was Just a Line Item

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