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Siemens settles Israel bribery case for €38m

German technology giant Siemens has agreed to pay €38 million to settle a corruption case in Israel, local media reported on Monday.

Published: 3 May 2016 08:30 CEST
Siemens settles Israel bribery case for €38m

The company has also agreed to appoint an external inspector to supervise its business in Israel, business newspaper Globes reported.

Siemens has been dogged by the scandal over its relationship with the Israel Electric Corporation (IEC), where it allegedly bribed senior executives over a bid to supply turbines more than ten years ago.

Six IEC executives now face charges in Tel Aviv for bribery and money laundering, as they are suspected of accepting bribes of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash or in transfers to Swiss bank accounts.

It's not the first time in recent months that Siemens, one of Germany's biggest global brands, has been associated with bribery.

In October a former finance officer for the company in Argentina admitted to paying $100 million (€86.51 million) in kick backs to government officials in hopes of securing a contract to produce national identity cards.

Prosecutors in Potsdam are also investigating the company over alleged corrupt practises at Berlin's long-delayed new airport. Siemens are accused of charging the airport €1.9 million for work that was never done.

ISRAEL

Former Israeli soldier attacked on Berlin street

A former Israeli soldier was attacked in the German capital Berlin, police said Saturday, with one or several unknown assailants spraying him with an irritant and throwing him to the ground.

Published: 10 October 2021 09:26 CEST
Former Israeli soldier attacked on Berlin street
Israeli soldiers on operation near the Gaza Strip. Photo: dpa | Ilia Yefimovich

The 29-year-old was wearing a top with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) logo when the attackers started harassing him on Friday about his religion, the police added, calling it “an anti-Semitic attack”.

Officers are seeking the assailants, who fled immediately after the attack, on suspicion of a politically-motivated crime.

Saturday is the second anniversary of an attack by a far-right gunman on a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle, who killed two in a rampage when he failed to break into the house of worship.

It was one of a string of incidents that led authorities to declare the far right and neo-Nazis Germany’s top security threat.

Also this week, a musician claimed he was turned away from a hotel in eastern city Leipzig for wearing a Star-of-David pendant.

While the allegations prompted a fierce response from a Jewish community unsettled by increasing anti-Semitic crimes, several investigations have been mounted into contradictory accounts of the incident.

In 2019, police recorded 2,032 anti-Semitic crimes, an increase of 13 percent year-on-year.

“The threat is complex and comes from different directions” from jihadists to the far right, the federal government’s commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism Felix Klein said recently.

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