Computing multinational Hewlett-Packard (HP) is to pay US regulators $108m to settle a corruption scandal involving employees at subsidiaries in three countries, who were charged with bribing government officials to win and retain lucrative public contracts.
The case piles further pressure on the HP boss, Meg Whitman, who is already managing the fallout from her company’s disastrous acquisition of the British software group Autonomy, while losing ground commercially to Samsung, Apple and Chinese rival Lenovo.
Corruption was unearthed in relation to contracts worth $40m to install IT equipment at the national police headquarters in Poland, €35m of work for government prosecutors in Russia, and a deal to supply Mexico’s state-owned petroleum company.
The investigation has involved regulators in Poland and Germany, the US Department of Justice (DoJ), its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the FBI. A parallel criminal case has now been announced by the DoJ.
In Poland, prosecutors on Wednesday charged a former HP executive, named in accordance with local law only as Tomasz Z, with handing over cash, computers and audio and video equipment worth more than $600,000 to the head of IT at the country’s police headquarters.
Meanwhile the SEC said HP’s subsidiary in Russia had also paid more than $2m through agents and various shell companies to a Russian government official to retain a multimillion-dollar contract with the federal prosecutor’s office. The corruption is said to have occurred from 2000 to 2007, Guardian informs.
