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FRANKFURT - A former top executive at Siemens has been arrested in a corruption affair that has shaken the German engineering giant - the most senior ex-manager to be detained in the investigation so far.
Munich prosecutors said they had taken Thomas Ganswindt, the former head of Siemens' telecoms equipment division, into custody as part of a probe into hundreds of millions of euros in suspected bribes siphoned off from Siemens accounts.
Ganswindt, once seen as a potential chief executive of Siemens, left the group after 17 years in September to become CEO of Luxembourg-based metering services firm Elster Group.
The Munich state prosecutor has been investigating a dozen individuals, several of whom are now in jail, since November.
The affair was at first said by Siemens to involve no more than a few tens of millions of euros.
But Siemens now says it is probing more than €420 million ($800 million) in payments to consultants over seven years as part of its own inquiry into the matter.
Chief financial officer Joe Kaeser said not all the payments under investigation were necessarily dubious.
Corruption watchdog Transparency International has said it may expel Siemens over the scandal.
The affair has compounded a run of bad publicity in recent months for Siemens, which was forced to postpone planned hefty pay hikes for top executives after a public outcry that coincided with the bankruptcy of its former mobile phones unit.
The 159-year-old engineering conglomerate, one of Europe's biggest employers, has also cut its reported profit for its last fiscal year by €73 million as a result of revised tax estimates as it questions the payments.
- REUTERS
