Siemens ex-manager stands trial

Siemens has been blighted by bribery allegations for more than a year

A former Siemens manager has gone on trial for his alleged role in a corruption scandal involving bribes to win overseas contracts.

Reinhardt Siekaczek, 57, who worked at Siemens for almost 40 years, told a Munich court how he set up a number of slush funds to disguise the payments.

He is charged with 58 counts of breach of trust, but is not accused of paying the bribes or benefiting from them.

The scandal emerged in 2007 and has sparked probes in several countries.

Mr Siekaczek, who worked in Siemens' telecoms division, said that he had been asked by his superiors to set up a way of siphoning money from the company to use to win lucrative overseas orders illegally.

He said the system of sham companies he created to disguise the bribes was well known in the department.

Mr Siekaczek explained how managers at the telecoms unit signed post-it notes that were stuck onto potentially incriminating documents instead of signing the papers themselves.

"In this way, the signatories could elegantly remove signs of their involvement if it came to an investigation," he said.

The trial is scheduled to last throughout July.

Investigations

A number of current and former senior Siemens executives have been arrested since November 2006.

The firm was fined 201m euros ($317m; �159.9m) by a Munich court last October over bribes its telecoms unit paid to government officials in Nigeria, Libya and Russia.

After carrying out its own investigation, Siemens has acknowledged suspicious payments worth some 1.3bn euros.

German prosecutors are investigating up to 300 past and present Siemens managers.

Meanwhile the US finance regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, has also launched an inquiry.

Siemens former chief executive Klaus Kleinfeld and former chairman Heinrich von Pierer have both resigned since the scandal was uncovered, although neither have been accused of wrongdoing.

Siemens is an engineering powerhouse with businesses that range from wind turbines to transport.

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