Alcatel Says 'No Thanks'
to Middlemen
Alcatel-Lucent’s new
boss Ben Verwaayen is
cutting back on the use
of outside consultants
to secure customer
deals, a practice that
has gotten
Alcatel-Lucent and some
other companies into
trouble when middlemen
were found to have paid
bribes in foreign
countries.
Last September, a former
executive of Alcatel –
the French
telecommunications
equipment group that
merged with Lucent of
the U.S. in 2006 – was
sentenced to 30 months
in prison in a case
involving bribery in
Costa Rica.
The former executive,
Christian Sapsizian,
pleaded guilty under the
U.S. Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act to
conspiring with a Costa
Rican consultant to
funnel us$2.5 million in
bribes to obtain deals
with the Instituto
Costarricense de
Electricidad (ICE).
Costa Rican officials, who are still investigating, have said that bribes
paid by middlemen on
Alcatel’s behalf in that
country may have totaled
us$15 million.
Alcatel-Lucent isn’t the
only company tarred by
such corruption.
The use of middlemen
figured prominently in a
massive bribery scandal
at Germany’s Siemens,
for which the company is
paying fines totaling
some us$1.6 billion.
Verwaayen, struggling to
return Alcatel-Lucent to
profitability, has
obviously concluded that
the company can ill
afford the risk of a
costly bribery scandal. |
