This is what I am worried about, that it is widespread! Not just Siemens, but all such companies operating in these countries where it is the normal practice to pay someone to ´smooth´ things along.
It is clear that these countries are requiring payments from companies, just to do business.
Let´s clean it all up, not just rely on executives, who have careers and performance objectives, to keep everyone honest.
Governments need to have a role and need to provide executives with easier ways to denounce these practices.
How about an EU hotline that truly is anonymous and secret.
Onésimo Alvarez-Moro
See article:
There was a “general practice” of paying bribes across much of Siemens, according to people with inside knowledge of internal investigations at Europe’s largest engineering group.
A probe by an external law firm, Debevoise & Plimpton, has shown that the alleged bribery was not restricted to “one-offs and was not just in one division” as had been hitherto assumed, one person said.
Investigations were continuing and could last one to two years more, he added.
“There was a general practice. I don’t know really how to define a system so I can’t say whether it was a system. But it wasn’t a one-off. It affected several divisions [Siemens has 10] – although hopefully not all of them,” the person said.
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