The Courthouse News Service reported this week that a government investigator in Argentina claims he was beaten and tortured because he blew the whistle on bribes from Siemens to Argentine officials.
The allegations were made in a suit filed September 12 in federal court in Miami by Carlos Moran and his family. They’re asking for at least $100 million in damages based on human rights violations.
Named as defendants were Siemens AG and a subsidiary in Argentina.
The suit said the Siemens defendants paid bribes to Argentine officials to help win a $1 billion contract for Argentina’s National Identity Card Project.
When Moran, a government investigator, recommended that Siemens shouldn’t win the contract because of the bribery, he was ‘brutally attacked [in 2001] by the mercenaries hired by Siemens Argentina,’ the suit alleges.
Last year, the DOJ and SEC charged eight former executives and agents from Siemens with bribing government officials in Argentina. ‘Over the course of the bribery scheme,’ the SEC said, ‘over $100 million in bribes were paid.’
The eight defendants, according to the indictment, allegedly bribed a series of Argentine government officials for ten years beginning in 1994 to win the contract to produce national identity cards.
Siemens’ settlement in 2008 with the DOJ and SEC for $800 million is still the biggest FCPA case of all time.
View or download the civil complaint in Carlos A. Moran v. Siemens AG in here.
1 Comment
Interesting article, but I think the date of the events would have been worth mentioning. There is a big difference if it happened after Siemens made its deal with the DOJ or it happened together with those already discovered.
Also, an interesting point for the readers would be to see if there were other incidents in Argentina that are "covered" by Siemens' deal with the DOJ.
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