Mercedes bribery claims spark US criminal inquiry

emad · Post by **emad** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 12:07 pm

David Teather in New York Saturday August 6, 2005 The Guardian The United States justice department has opened a criminal investigation into allegations that DaimlerChrysler-owned Mercedes paid bribes to foreign officials. The investigation was sparked by a former Chrysler accountant, who has alleged in a lawsuit that the German carmaker kept secret bank accounts to bribe officials in Africa and Latin America. The American financial watchdog, the securities and exchange commission, opened a similar inquiry last year. The former managing director of the company's plant in Nigeria, Rudi Kornmayer, killed himself in a German park on July 22. Prosecutors in Stuttgart said he left a suicide note but have not released its contents. A spokesman for DaimlerChrysler said yesterday that the company is cooperating with the investigation. A report in the Wall Street Journal suggested the inquiry is concentrated on a dozen countries. It said investigators were trying to establish whether senior company executives were aware the bribes were being paid. Foreign bribes were outlawed in the US in 1977. The former employee, an accountant, David Bazetta, made the allegations in a wrongful dismissal suit filed last year and settled last month. He claimed he was fired in part because he complained to superiors about the secret bank accounts. Germany has been rocked by high profile corporate scandals in recent months. At Volkswagen, three executives resigned amid allegations that union leaders were given free trips, gifts for their spouses and call girls; at Commerzbank there are allegations of a cover-up of money laundering for a Russian telecoms company; at BMW a purchasing manager allegedly paid $100,000 (£56,000) in bribes to a supplier's wife. Last week Jurgen Schrempp, the chief executive of DaimlerChrysler, unexpectedly said he would step down at the end of this year, ahead of his contract expiring in April 2008. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1543579,00.html">www.guardian.co.uk/busine...79,00.html</a>