ABUJA — PRESIDENT Umaru Yar’Adua vowed, yesterday, to punish anyone found to have collected bribes from the German telecommunications company, Siemens AG, and declared that there would be no sacred cow.
A Munich court had named four former Nigerian Ministers of Communications Cornelius Adebayo, the late Haruna Elewi, Tajudeen Olanrewaju and Bello Muhammad— as well as other officials and chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Professor Jubril Aminu, as having received bribes of about 10 million euros from the company..
Professor Aminu, Dr. Mohammed, and General Olanrewaju have denied their involvement in the scandal.
The opposition Action Congress (AC) reacting to the development called it a national disgrace “coming so soon after full disclosures from the Wilbros bribery scandal also involving Nigeria officials have yet to be made.
The party said time was ripe for the Yar’Adua administration to “summon courage to probe the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo which has been spewing out these scandals like lava from a volcanic eruption.
President Yar’Adua in a statement by his Special Adviser on Communicators, Mr. Segun Adeniyi, said relevant security agencies had been directed to “thoroughly investigate the allegations and take appropriate actions.
In the statement issued in Saudi Arabia where the president, is attending this year’s OPEC meeting, Mr Adeniyi said:
“The attention of President Umaru Musa Yar’dua has been drawn to media reports of the alleged bribery by an international Telecoms company (Siemens) of some past Nigerian public officials and wishes to assure the nation that anybody found culpable in the scandal would face the full wrath of the law.
“The President has, therefore, directed all the relevant security agencies to thoroughly investigate the allegations and take appropriate legal actions against anybody implicated in corrupt practices.
“The President also wishes to assure all Nigerians that in the new nation that we seek to build under his watch, any public official found to have abused his or her oath of office will not go unpunished.
“The President further assures that in this Siemens scandal, as in all cases that border on good governance and transparency, there will neither be sacred cows nor a cover up for anybody found culpable of breaching the law.”
Mohammed denies alleged bribe
However, Dr Bello Mohammed, a former Communications Minister, yesterday denied knowledge of the alleged bribe of public officers by Siemens AG.
Mr Emeka Kanu, Media Adviser to Mohammed, in a statement said his boss was innocent of the allegation.
The allegation, according to him. was not only “strange and bewildering, but malicious, libellous and wicked evil designs by his political opponents.”
He stated that the former Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service and PDP chieftain, never met one Mr Reinhard Siekaczek mentioned in the court process.
“As for Mr Siedel, we can firmly say Dr Mohammed has had no personal relationship with him other than at the official level as Minister of Communications,” he said.
Kanu said Mohammed, the PDP National Vice Chairman (North-West), had never received any amount in bribe from any of the persons mentioned in the case.
Mohammed, who paid glowing tributes to his admirers and supporters, said he had contacted his lawyers for necessary counselling.
Senator Aminu and Gen. Olanrewaju had earlier also denied their involvement and challenged those behind the allegations to show proof.
It’s a national disgrace — AC
In its reaction, the opposition Action Congress (AC) in a statement by its spokesman, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said:
“The 6-million-dollar Wilbros bribery scandal and now the 12-million-euro Siemens bribery scandal have shown that the Obasanjo administration was a cesspool of corruption, despite its anti-graft battle and Obasanjo’s holier than thou attitude.
“The latest scandal is particularly sickening, considering the staggering amount involved and the calibre of government officials named in it.
It is instructive that Nigerian officials alone took 10 million out of the overall 12 million euros allegedly paid out by the German company to officials in three countries, including Russia and Libya.
“That made Nigeria a clear gold medallist in this Siemens bribery contest, with Russia a distant second with only 2 million euros shared by 38 people,” the party said.
AC said the investigation into the Siemens bribery scandal should determine, among others, the culpability or otherwise of the listed officials; identify the ‘political office holders’ who took over 3 million euros out of the 10 million euros; reveal the identities of the “Telecom and Ministry officials” referred to in the scandal and mete out appropriate punishment to all those involved to serve as a deterrent.
“It is not enough for any of those listed to hurriedly issue a statement denying their involvement. They must be bold enough to go further, and perhaps institute a legal action to clear their name, if indeed they are not involved. That way, the truth will come out.
“And to the Yar’Adua administration, we say: If ever any government has a chance to show its anti-corruption campaign is not a fluke, it is this (Yar’Adua) government, considering the rate at which the corruption allegations are being made against public officials, in both the past and present administrations.”
Siemens accepted responsibility for the misconduct and agreed to pay a 201 million Euro fine decreed by the court.
The court focussed on bribes between 2001 and 2004 connected to Siekaczek, a former manager in the telecommunications-equipment unit who spent 38 years at Siemens. Siekaczek has been indicted on embezzlement charges in the Munich court, and his lawyer said he was cooperating with prosecutors in their investigation of bribes at Siemens. He is expected to face trial early next year.
Siekaczek has told prosecutors that he knows about bribes beyond the three countries that were made with the knowledge of senior managers, according to separate court records.
That testimony could serve as a springboard for other criminal investigations and additional fines in countries where Siemens is active, including the US.
Siemens, Europe’s largest engineering company with revenues last year of 72 billion Euros, manufactures everything from light bulbs to high-speed trains.
When they carried out a dramatic raid on Siemens headquarters a year ago, German police focussed on just 20 million Euros in the alleged fraud.
The investigation quickly mushroomed into one of the continent’s biggest bribery cases, triggering high-level arrests including Siekaczek and the resignations of the chairman and chief executive earlier this year.
Siemens is still being investigated on several continents. The company said last week it has identified 1.3 billion Euros in suspicious transactions world-wide between 2000 and 2006.
The Munich court ruling, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, lists bribes from 2,000 to 2.25 million Euros steered by Mr. Siekaczek and colleagues to dozens of government officials in the three countries.
Siemens has sold telecommunications equipment in Nigeria , but the ruling doesn’t specify what contracts Siemens was seeking when its employees paid bribes. It also doesn’t say what, if anything, the recipients of Siemens’s money did in exchange for it.
The three-judge panel said its ruling was based on information from interviews with Siemens employees and extensive files of documents. Many of those documents were seized in the Nov. 15, 2006, police raids of Siemens offices in Germany .
Anton Winkler, a spokesman for the prosecutors in Munich, said prosecutors haven’t interviewed those who were named in the court ruling as bribe takers.
The prosecutors aren’t pursuing action against these people because German courts usually don’t have jurisdiction if a non-German receives a bribe outside of Germany .
Winkler declined to discuss the precise nature of the evidence, but said: “The names and other information in the decision were carefully checked f
