A Corporate Culture Of Systemic Corruption
by Miki Saxon
Why bother with better products, efficient manufacturing and good business process when you can have a bribe budget instead? It’s simpler and almost guarantees that your company wins the bidding.
Ask Siemens, who just paid a $1.6 billion fine, with more to come.
The bribe budget for Siemens’ telecom unit ran $40-50 million a year and was professionally managed by Reinhard Siekaczek, the accountant who ran the slush fund from 2002-2006, although it neither started nor ended with him.
Bribery is nothing new, companies and individuals have been doing it for centuries, so why does this one bother me so much?
It’s not that Simens’ ex-presidnet landed on his feet—don’t they almost always?
“Klaus Kleinfeld, the company’s C.E.O., resigned in April 2007. He has denied wrongdoing and is now head of Alcoa, the aluminum giant.”
But the following really makes my blood boil…
“Although court documents are salted throughout with the word “bribes,” the Justice Department allowed Siemens to plead to accounting violations because it cooperated with the investigation and because pleading to bribery violations would have barred Siemens from bidding on government contracts in the United States. Siemens doesn’t dispute the government’s account of its actions.”
Got that? Siemens admits what it gave bribes, but our government doesn’t want to prevent a corporation that cheated dozens of American companies out of hundreds of millions of dollars of possible business from being able to bid on US government contracts.
How’s that for a warm and fuzzy feeling at Christmas?
Image credit: flickr
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:19 am
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