Greece Reaches Settlement With Siemens Over Past Bribery Charges
March 08 2012 - 1:24PM
Dow Jones News
Greece said Thursday it has reached an out-of-court settlement
with German conglomerate Siemens AG (SI) in a bid to end a
years-long dispute over past bribery allegations against the
company.
The deal was formally approved by Greece's cabinet Thursday and
will now go to parliament for final ratification, a statement
issued by the finance ministry said.
"The issue has now closed," said a senior government official
after the cabinet meeting.
Under the terms of the deal, Siemens will write off EUR80
million in unpaid arrears owed by the Greek government, pay EUR90
million in cash to the government for various purposes, and spend
EUR100 million in new investments in Greece in 2012. It will also
consider EUR60 million in future investments.
The case relates to claims by Greece that bribes paid by Siemens
to various Greek governments to secure state contracts from the
late 1990s up to 2007 have cost Greek taxpayers EUR2 billion. Part
of that money is alleged to have ended up in the pockets of senior
Greek officials who helped broker the contracts, according to a
deposition by a former senior official as well as several former
senior Socialists party officials.
Siemens has previously said it would cooperate with the Greek
government in investigating the bribery charges after they were
made public in a special parliamentary investigation last January.
Earlier, it had rejected the allegations.
In November 2011, Greek finance and justice ministers were
authorized to seek an out-of-court settlement with Siemens.
According to a recent report in the Kathimerini newspaper,
Greece is pursuing a separate arbitration process in Paris over two
of Siemens' top contracts from the period in question. One was a
contract to digitize the network of Greece's main
telecommunications provider Hellenic Telecommunications
Organization SA (HTO.AT) and the other project involved a costly
security system for the Athens 2004 Olympics that failed to work
properly.
-By Nektaria Stamouli, Stelios Bouras and Alkman Granitsas, Dow
Jones Newswires; +30 210 373 1774;
alkman.granitsas@dowjones.com
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