A network of sham companies and slush funds was set up to route bribes worth 1.3 billion Euros between 2000 to 2006 for telecom projects in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Greece. The first trial starts on Monday, with 58 counts of breach of trust against Reinhard Siekaczek, a manager at Siemens' ICN fixed-line communications unit in Munich until 2004.

Short piece out on Reuters this morning (”Siemens to regroup international operations“) citing a German daily newspaper that Siemens is in the process of restructuring its international operations into 20 regional centers: