Corruption

Concrete examples for corruption in Europe:

• Siemens AG is a German engineering company; it is the largest one in Europe

• Operates worldwide; employs about 420 000 people in nearly 190 countries (including its subsidiaries)

• Case of corruption

• Siemens being corrupt was detected in 2006, when, after various razzias, more and more corruption scandals in the company became public

• Questionable payments of about €1.3 billion from 2002 to 2006 were found. They were the beginning of a broad range of investigations in Germany, the US and many other countries.

• -> It was one of the biggest scandals of corruption in Germany

Case of corruption

Accusation

• They were accused of using routinely bribes and slush funds in order to secure contracts in many countries all over the world, e.g. a national identity card project in Argentina, mass transit work in Venezuela, a nationwide mobile phone network in Bangladesh and a United Nations oil- for- food program in Iraq under Saddam Hussein

• company paid an estimated $1.4 billion in bribes to government officials in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.

• Until the 1990s, Siemens set up a system of front companies and slush funds in Liechtenstein and Switzerland and transmitted money to their helpers, who wanted to stay anonymous, on these accounts or they delivered the slush funds in suitcases to foreign officials

Opinions

• “Their actions were not an anomaly. They were standard operating procedures for corporate executives who viewed bribery as a business strategy.”- Quotation by Joseph Persichini, the head of the Washington office of the FBI.

• Officials called the schemes “unprecedented in scale and geographic reach.”

Consequences

• The “criminals” had to pay a penalty or give a donation to charity organizations

• The company paid about 600 million in total-> in fines in December 2008 after being accused of corruption

• In May 2007 a German court charged two former...