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CRIME

Former Siemens chief will not face corruption charges

Heinrich von Pierer, former Siemens chief and supervisory board president, will not face penal charges in connection with a vast corruption scandal at the German engineering giant, prosecutors in southern Munich said in a statement on Friday.

Published: 9 May 2008 14:16 CEST
Former Siemens chief will not face corruption charges
Von Pierer on the phone in Berlin in 2006. Photo: DPA

The statement said prosecutors did not have evidence to justify penal charges against the former head of Siemens, which is being probed for business practices that allegedly involved paying bribes to obtain foreign contracts.

Von Pierer could however be called to answer in a procedure that would not result in a trial or prison sentence.

If found to have failed in his duties, he might have to pay a fine.

An internal Siemens probe has found that almost all its sectors of activity were subject to active corruption, the group said on April 29.

The international law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton “has found evidence in each of the examined groups and in various countries indicating that domestic as well as foreign compliance regulations have been violated,” it said.

“The violations in question reflect not only outright incidents of corruption, but, in many cases, violations of regulations pertaining to internal controls,” the enquiry found.

Siemens employs about 400,000 people around the world and makes a broad range of products including household appliances, medical equipment, trains, turbines and power stations.

Von Pierer ran the group for 13 years before he became supervisory board president in 2005.

Siemens has acknowledged the existence of special funds worth €1.3 billion ($2 billion) used to obtain foreign contracts and agreed in October to pay a fine of €201 million to put an end to some German legal proceedings.

A separate investigation is being carried out by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) because Siemens shares are traded in New York.

A report last month in the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said German prosecutors were investigating 270 suspects as the corruption probe took on a fully international dimension.

The newspaper said that overseas business figures had allegedly colluded with Siemens to deposit large cash floats in Switzerland, Dubai and other financial havens for use as hidden sweetener payments to secure large foreign contracts.

A Siemens executive has alleged to prosecutors that von Pierer ordered him and a colleague in 2002 and 2003 to make suspicious payments of about $10 million in connection with a large order from the Argentine government.

FLOODS

German prosecutors drop investigation into ‘unforeseeable’ flood disaster

More than two and a half years after the deadly flood disaster in the Ahr Valley, western Germany, prosecutors have dropped an investigation into alleged negligence by the local district administrator.

Published: 18 April 2024 15:32 CEST
German prosecutors drop investigation into 'unforeseeable' flood disaster

The public prosecutor’s office in Koblenz has closed the investigation into the deadly flood disaster in the Ahr valley that occurred in the summer of 2021.

A sufficient suspicion against the former Ahr district administrator Jürgen Pföhler (CDU) and an employee from the crisis team has not arisen, announced the head of the public prosecutor’s office in Koblenz, Mario Mannweiler, on Thursday.

Following the flood disaster in the Ahr region in Rhineland-Palatinate – in which 136 people died in Germany and thousands of homes were destroyed – there were accusations that the district of Ahrweiler, with Pföhler at the helm, had acted too late in sending flood warnings.

An investigation on suspicion of negligent homicide in 135 cases began in August of 2021. Pföhler had always denied the allegations.

READ ALSO: UPDATE – German prosecutors consider manslaughter probe into deadly floods

The public prosecutor’s office came to the conclusion that it was an extraordinary natural disaster: “The 2021 flood far exceeded anything people had experienced before and was subjectively unimaginable for residents, those affected, emergency services and those responsible for operations alike,” the authority said.

Civil protections in the district of Ahrweiler, including its disaster warning system, were found to be insufficient.

READ ALSO: Germany knew its disaster warning system wasn’t good enough – why wasn’t it improved?

But from the point of view of the public prosecutor’s office, these “quite considerable deficiencies”, which were identified by an expert, did not constitute criminal liability.

Why did the case take so long?

The investigations had dragged on partly because they were marked by considerable challenges, said the head of the Rhineland-Palatinate State Criminal Police Office, Mario Germano. “Namely, to conduct investigations in an area marked by the natural disaster and partially destroyed. Some of the people we had to interrogate were severely traumatised.”

More than 300 witnesses were heard including firefighters, city workers and those affected by the flood. More than 20 terabytes of digital data had been secured and evaluated, and more than 300 gigabytes were deemed relevant to the proceedings.

Pföhler, who stopped working as the district administrator in August 2021 due to illness, stepped down from the role in October 2021 citing an incapacity for duty. 

The conclusion of the investigation had been postponed several times, in part because the public prosecutor’s office wanted to wait for the outcome of the investigative committee in the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament.

READ ALSO: Volunteer army rebuilds Germany’s flood-stricken towns

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