German automaker Daimler has pleaded guilty to US charges of bribery and agreed to pay US$185 million to settle the affair, the US government said on Thursday.
The Justice Department said Daimler and three of its subsidiaries had resolved charges related to a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) investigation into the company’s worldwide sales practices.
US District Court Judge Richard Leon approved the settlement at a hearing on Thursday in Washington.
“Daimler AG’s Russian subsidiary DaimlerChrysler Automotive Russia SAO [DCAR], now known as Mercedes-Benz Russia SAO, and its German subsidiary, Export and Trade Finance GmbH [ETF], each pleaded guilty to criminal informations charging the companies with one count of conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA and one count of violating those provisions,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
As part of the plea agreements, DCAR and ETF agreed to pay criminal fines of US$27.3 million and US$29.12 million, respectively, part of the US$93.6 million in criminal fines and penalties that Daimler and its subsidiaries paid in total, it said.
“These are significant and widespread violations,” said prosecutor John Darden, speaking in federal court on behalf of the US government.
Darden said the sentence was clearly below federal sentencing guidelines.
“Daimler showed excellent cooperation,” Darden said. “The company has undertaken an effort to clean its own house. That reflects a serious change of mind on part of Daimler. This deserves credit.”
Judge Leon acknowledged that it was “a very complex case” as he accepted the plea agreement.
IMPROPER PAYMENTS
In a separate, related civil case, Daimler agreed to pay US$91.4 million to settle a case filed by markets regulator the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Daimler had earlier admitted to making hundreds of improper payments worth tens of millions of dollars to foreign government officials in at least 22 countries between 1998 and 2008, according to a deferred prosecution agreement filed in a Washington court.
The kickbacks of cash and gifts of luxury armored cars, golf clubs and vacations helped secure government contracts worth millions of US dollars in China, Russia, Thailand, Greece, Iraq and other countries.
MENDING ITS WAYS
Prosecutors recommended that the judge impose the US$93.6 million fine and accept the guilty plea of two Daimler subsidiaries. They said that Daimler had mended its ways and cooperated fully with the investigation.
Daimler regularly presented its findings to prosecutors, fired 45 employees implicated in the bribery and reformed its practices, prosecutors wrote.
The fines are significantly smaller than the US$800 million German industrial giant Siemens paid in 2008 to settle a US investigation into its bribery of officials to secure contracts in Argentina, Bangladesh, Iraq and Venezuela.
The bribery first came to light in 2004 when a former Daimler employee filed a whistleblower complaint saying he’d been fired for voicing concern about secret accounts maintained to pay the bribes.
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
STAGNATION: Once a bastion of leftist politics, the Aymara stronghold of El Alto is showing signs of shifting right ahead of the presidential election A giant cruise ship dominates the skyline in the city of El Alto in landlocked Bolivia, a symbol of the transformation of an indigenous bastion keenly fought over in tomorrow’s presidential election. The “Titanic,” as the tallest building in the city is known, serves as the latest in a collection of uber-flamboyant neo-Andean “cholets” — a mix of chalet and “chola” or Indigenous woman — built by Bolivia’s Aymara bourgeoisie over the past two decades. Victor Choque Flores, a self-made 46-year-old businessman, forked out millions of US dollars for his “ship in a sea of bricks,” as he calls his futuristic 12-story
FORUM: The Solomon Islands’ move to bar Taiwan, the US and others from the Pacific Islands Forum has sparked criticism that Beijing’s influence was behind the decision Tuvaluan Prime Minister Feletei Teo said his country might pull out of the region’s top political meeting next month, after host nation Solomon Islands moved to block all external partners — including China, the US and Taiwan — from attending. The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders’ meeting is to be held in Honiara in September. On Thursday last week, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele told parliament that no dialogue partners would be invited to the annual gathering. Countries outside the Pacific, known as “dialogue partners,” have attended the forum since 1989, to work with Pacific leaders and contribute to discussions around
RSS