The gag order was lifted today that the Israel Securities Authority and Israel Police questioned under caution four men on suspicion of involvement in receiving $16 million in bribes from Siemens AG (NYSE: SI; XETRA: SIE) to rig the Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) (TASE: ELEC.B22) tender for power station turbines. The four men are former Siemens Israel Energy and Industry Division manager Oren Aharonson; Oakfield Ltd. owner Shlomo Daniel, Aharonson's brother-in-law; forex trader Anton Mitchell Dalin, an associate of Aharonson; and Haim Bar-Nir, who served as IEC planning division deputy manager unit at the time, and recently left the company.
Former District Court Judge Dan Cohen is already serving a six-year sentence in the case, for taking a NIS 4 million bribe from Siemens. Aharonson was the state's witness against the judge.
Aharonson and his associates are suspected of being the middlemen in transferring Siemens' $16 million bribe to Bar-Nir and Dalin, through various foreign bank accounts. Aharonson is also suspected of obstructing the investigation and obstruction of justice by not handing the police information about the bribe. Aharonson and Daniel are also suspected of being beneficiaries of the bribe through commissions they took as its facilitators.
The bribery case in Israel is part of a worldwide scandal at Siemens involving $1.4 billion in bribes to facilitate deals.
IEC chairman Yiftach Ron-Tal said in response, "I demand a full investigation to reach the truth. We will fully cooperate with the policy. Our policy is to isolate corruption. I welcome the progress in the investigation and call on the policy to take the investigation to the end."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 18, 2014
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