MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Siemens manager charged for allegedly bribing Argentine officials with 27 million USD

The charges refer to the Argentine state project to produce ID cards

A former management board member of Germany’s Siemens AG has been charged with breach of trust for alleged bribery payments made to win a project in Argentina, the Munich State Prosecutors office said this week.

A statement said the executive, who was not named, was a member of the Siemens board in 2000-2007 and was responsible for the Americas business.

In December 2008, Europe's biggest engineering conglomerate agreed to pay 1.4 billion US dollars to US and German authorities to settle a US investigation of allegations that for years it paid bribes to win contracts.

The Munich state prosecutor's office said Siemens won the Argentine state project to produce identification cards, but even though this was stopped by the government in 2001, bribes of at least 27 million USD were made to government representatives through middle men.

It said the executive and a middleman of the Argentine government representative had a personal meeting that took place in Munich in November 2003 and both then had agreed for a 4.7 million USD payment to be covered by false contracts.

The Munich state prosecutor's office said the executive was informed in 2004 by the former head of the Siemens Argentine operations about the existence of an illicit account with assets of 40 million Euros but failed to disclose his knowledge to headquarters and refused to help the latter to transfer the money legally to the Siemens accounts.