1/24/11, "Greece to seek damages from Siemens over bribes," Reuters
"Greece will seek damages from German industrial conglomerate Siemens over past bribery scandals, senior government officials said on Monday.
The cash-strapped government is under strong pressure to punish those who have benefited from the country's widespread corruption over the past decades, as
voters hard pressed by austerity measures demand retribution.
Allegations that Greek politicians and political parties received money during successive administrations to grant Siemens lucrative contracts have dominated local media for years.
"Greece will seek compensation for the damage it has suffered from the corrupt practices that have been used by your company in the past," Investment Minister Harris Pamboukis said in a letter to the head of Siemens' Greek subsidiary.
"The Greek Republic owes it to its people to reveal the truth," he said.
Siemens ended one of the biggest corporate corruption probes in history when it agreed in 2008 to pay about 1 billion euros in fines and penalties after investigations by U.S. and German authorities into bribes it paid to win contracts.
Greek prosecutors are investigating alleged bribes on contracts between the Greek unit of Siemens and then state-controlled telecoms group OTE during 1997-2002.
A parliamentary committee is looking into this and into another scandal related to security systems for the 2004 Olympic Games. Lawmakers from the committee are expected to publish reports later on Monday and say which former Greek ministers they want to probe further in another investigative committee. One former Greek socialist minister told the committee last year he had accepted money from Siemens while in office in the late 1990s. He was arrested and charged with money laundering.
Three Siemens Hellas officials have been charged in the scandal but slipped the Greek authorities' grasp --
Siemens Hellas could not immediately be reached for comment but has said in the past it was fully cooperating with Greek authorities."
=============================
- SIEMENS is mentioned in ClimateGate emails, 10/5/09 and 10/6/09:
- A day later, Oct. 6, an emailer says he's in talks with Siemens about money for CO2 research. (Phil Jones blames "right wing web sites" for their troubles):
Subject: Co2 Data
From: Martin Lutyens
To: Andrew Manning
Dear Andrew,
I just came across an article in The Week, called "The case of the vanishing data". It
writes in a rather wry and sceptical way about your UEA colleagues Phil Jones and Tom
Wigley , saying that only their "homogenised" or "adjusted" historical data is
available, and the original, raw data has gone missing. Apparently some other
environmental gurus now want to look at the original data and were "fobbed off".
According to the article,
- the adjusted data forms the basis for much of the climate change debate and , because others now want to look at the source data,
- it is "at the centre of an academic spat that could have major implications for the climate change debate".
who may just be stirring it.
The article concludes"In short, the data invoked to verify the most significant
forecasts about the world's future,
- have simply vanished."
- what to say if asked.
Martin Lutyens
+44 (0) 207 938 2387
+44 (0) 796 646 2661
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia"
==========================
****Date, Oct. 6, 2009, (Phil Jones getting fed up with allegations and blames "right wing websites." Emailer Andrew says he's in talks with Siemens):
"From: Phil Jones
To: Andrew Manning
Subject: Re: Fwd: Co2 Data
Date: Tue Oct 6 08:38:04 2009
Andrew,
Getting a bit fed up with these baseless allegations....
It is the right wing web sites doing all this, presumably in the build up to Copenhagen.
****
At 00:13 06/10/2009, Andrew Manning wrote:
Hi Phil,
Is this another witch hunt (like Mann et al.)? How should I respond to the below?
(I'm in the process of trying to persuade Siemens Corp. (a company with half a million employees in 190 countries!) to donate me a little cash to do some CO2 measurments here in the UK - looking promising, so the last thing I need is news articles
calling into question (again) observed temperature increases - I thought we'd moved the debate beyond this, but seems that these sceptics are real die-hards!!).Kind regards,
Andrew"....****
=========================
- Siemens plead guilty to massive bribery and kickbacks and paid a fine of at least $1.6 billion. Perhaps like BP, Siemens thought by hooking up with the "green" or "climate" industry, people would forget they were crooks.
==========================
- 12/15/2008, CNN/Money: "According to the SEC, the company also used bribes to develop mobile telephone networks in Bangladesh,
- Siemens (SI) allegedly used kickback schemes to sell power stations and equipment to Iraq under the United Nations' Oil for Food Program. In all, the company engaged in more than $1.4 billion in bribes, earning more than $1.1 billion on its illegal transactions."...
==========================
UN Climate Chief Figueres says Siemens should lobby governments for global warming cash:
- 9/20/10, "Climate Deal May Need Company Lobbying, Figueres Says," Bloomberg,
"Success at climate-change talks in Mexico may depend on companies such as Siemens AG and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. prodding governments into action,
- said Christiana Figueres, the United Nations climate chief.
Companies should lobby governments to recognize the business opportunities that arise from curbing global warming, Figueres today told a group that tracks carbon emissions by the world’s largest companies. Helping developing countries deliver more energy with fewer warming gases represents
- a “huge opportunity,” she said at a conference in New York."
Reference: Al Gore trained UN Climate Change Exec Figueres
.
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