Chinese online media Caing.com has reported that Shi Wanzhong, the general manager of human resources at China Mobile, China's largest mobile carrier, is currently under investigation for accepting bribes from Siemens.
Shi was reported to have been detained early this year, under suspicion of being involved in the case of China Mobile's vice president Zhang Chunjiang who was being investigated by the Chinese authorities for breaching government regulations. However later investigations revealed that Shi's case was not related to that of Zhang; however he had had economic-related problems when he worked as president and general manager of China Mobile Anhui.
The report said that Shi gave extensive assistance to Siemens' communications service during his tenure at China Mobile Anhui. It claimed that Siemens paid a USD5 million fee to an Anhui-based consulting company whose registrar was nominally Shi's wife, although the company was actually controlled by Shi. The report also disclosed that Shi was listed as a suspect directly after the Siemens' bribery scandal case was exposed in 2008.
The U.S. Securities Exchange Commission started to probe into Siemens' involvement in global bribery in 2006. SEC's investigations found that Siemens allocated millions of Euros for bribery and it paid bribes in several countries, including China, to secure business contracts. Meanwhile, the United States Justice Department also disclosed details of its investigations into the Siemens' bribery scandal, which included a number of projects in China, covering transportation, telecommunications, and medical services. To date the U.S. authorities have not published any names of people or companies involved in the scandal.
