World Business Briefs

■ SEMICONDUCTORS
Ex-Infineon chief probed
Munich have widened their investigation into corruption at chipmaker Infineon Technologies AG to include the company's former head, Ulrich Schumacher, a spokesman said on Saturday. Christian Schmidt-Sommerfeld, a spokesman for Munich prosecutors, confirmed that Schumacher was under investigation. But he declined to comment on a report in the German weekly Focus that the investigation centered on Schumacher's purchases of collectable automobiles from the head of a Swiss consultancy, who offered them to Schumacher at below market prices in return for contracts with the Munich-based chipmaker. Ralf-Udo Schneider, the president of Swiss BF Consulting AG, was arrested in Switzerland last month in connection with the probe after he was implicated in the scandal.

■ BANKING
Corruption cases rising
China 240 cases of corruption in its state-owned commercial banks in the first half of the year, with losses totalling 1.6 billion yuan (US$198 million), state media said yesterday. The Xinhua news agency, citing a State Banking Regulatory Commission official, said the money stolen from commercial banks amounted to about half of the country's total sum loss to bank embezzlement. About 25 percent of the 240 cases involved more than 1 million yuan each, Xinhua said. Shen Xiaoming (沈曉明), deputy director of the commission's supervision department, attributed the large number of scandals to bank reforms and improved government efforts to crack down on financial crimes. The past year has seen an increase in the number of arrests and trials on corruption charges of bank officials, from branch managers to the vice chairman of the state-run Bank of China (中國銀行) in Hong Kong.

■ AUTOMOBILES
Proton eyes German models
Malaysia's carmaker Proton Holdings is mulling the purchase of two of Volkswagen's platforms, a report said yesterday. The Edge financial newspaper quoted a Proton official as saying that the company was interested in the Passat and Sharan platforms, both of which achieved international success a few years ago. The Sharan is a seven-seater multi-purpose vehicle while the Passat is a saloon model. The source declined to reveal how much Proton would pay for the platforms. But one industry analyst said buying the two platforms would not address Proton's problem of quickly producing new models, as design and development work could still take a year or two.

■ TAXES
Hikes inevitable in Japan
An in Japan's 5 percent sales tax will be "unavoidable" for whoever succeeds Junichiro Koizumi as the country's next prime minister, Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki said yesterday. "Facing the issue of increasing the sales tax will be unavoidable" for Koizumi's successor, Tanigaki said on TV Asahi's Sunday Project program. ``We can't get away from it." Koizumi has said he won't raise the tax on consumers while he is prime minister. Japan needs to bolster tax revenue to help it slow a rise in public debt, which according to the finance ministry will rise to 151 percent of GDP by March 31, the highest among the world's major industrialized nations. Japan also faces a fall in the number of tax payers as more people retire and the population declines. Japan relies on sales of government debt to cover shortfalls in tax revenue, Tanigaki said.