KUALA LUMPUR, July 19 — A former employee of telecommunications company Alcatel Network (M) Sdn Bhd was charged today with giving a RM25,000 bribe to a Telekom Malaysia (TM) officer, in a case linked to the French company’s admission last year that it had bribed government officials to win a US$85 million (RM255 million) contract.
French telecommunications giant Alcatel-Lucent had on December 28 last year agreed to pay US$137 million to resolve US criminal and civil probes after it admitted to bribing officials in countries including Malaysia, Taiwan, and Costa Rica.
A filing on Malaysia titled “The Malaysia Bribery Scheme” was eight paragraphs long and reported that “from October 2004 to February 2006, Alcatel bribed government officials in Malaysia to obtain confidential information relating to a public tender that Alcatel ultimately won, the result of which yielded a telecommunications contract valued at approximately US$85 million”.
Former Alcatel Network regional customer account leader Radziah Ani was accused today of giving a RM25,000 bribe to TM assistant manager Mohd Asri Idris on February 17, 2006 to obtain information on a tender related to TM’s then-subsidiary Celcom Malaysia’s 3G mobile services.
Radziah pleaded not guilty in the magistrate’s court here.
If convicted, Radziah faces 20 years’ jail and a fine of not less than five times the amount of the bribe, or RM10,000, whichever is higher.
In March, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) had asked TM to either blacklist or suspend dealings with Alcatel-Lucent over the bribery case involving the GLC and the French telecommunications giant.
The French company had admitted that the TM employees who received bribes were “foreign officials” within the meaning of the US Foreign Corrupt Practises Act and “were in a significant position to influence the policy decisions Telekom Malaysia made.”
It added the Basel-based Alcatel Standard made significant lump-sum payments through US bank accounts to two consultants labelled “Malaysian Consultant A” and “Malaysian Consultant B”, purportedly for market research.
“Alcatel Standard paid US$200,000 to Malaysian Consultant A in 2005 for a series of ‘market reports’ describing conditions in the Malaysian telecommunications market. Similarly, Alcatel Standard paid US$500,000 to Malaysian Consultant B in 2005 for a ‘strategic intelligence report’.
“However, the work product these consultants prepared could not justify the size of Alcatel Standard’s payments. In fact, Malaysian Consultant A and Malaysian Consultant B did not appear to render any legitimate services to Alcatel Malaysia in connection with these payments,” Alcatel-Lucent had said.
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