Siemens set to leave Sudan

GERMAN engineering giant Siemens is pulling out of Sudan on moral and political grounds, its chief executive Klaus Kleinfeld has said in a magazine interview.

Siemens’ reputation has been hit by a €200 million bribery and embezzlement scandal as well as by its involvement in Sudan, where 200,000 people have been killed in the four-year-old conflict in Darfur.

Mr Kleinfeld told Der Spiegel that Siemens’s policy was never to pay bribes to secure contracts, and was asked if the company would ever cease operating in a country for political or moral reasons.

“That’s what we are doing in Sudan. We have decided to pull out all our business divisions — and not for security reasons,” he replied.

Sudan’s economy has boomed on the back of oil exports, but legislators from the US, where firms have been banned from operating in Sudan since 1997, have put pressure on non-US firms to exit Sudan too.

A small number of US investors have sold Siemens shares in protest at its Sudan activities and today EU foreign ministers will consider whether to threaten Sudan with sanctions if it does not allow UN peacekeepers into Darfur.

Siemens operates in nearly 190 countries and reported sales of almost €24 billion in its last quarterly results.

Regarding the corruption allegations facing some of Siemens’s 475,000 employees, Mr Kleinfeld said he was fully prepared to discuss the issue with shareholders.

He also said he did not think a venture with Nokia was endangered by the scandal surrounding Siemens’ telecommunications division, where prosecutors suspect €200m was used to help secure contracts over the past seven years.

Siemens is investigating a further €420m in dubious consultancy payments.

Separately, German news magazine Focus reported that 60 suspects had been questioned by prosecutors from Munich, where Siemens is based. State prosecutors declined to confirm the figure.