Polish prosecutor alleges HP executive paid bribes of $500,000

Polish prosecutors alleged today that a local executive with US firm Hewlett-Packard paid bribes worth over $500,000 in exchange for help winning contracts to supply computer equipment to the Polish police headquarters.

Poland's interior minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz said HP would make an announcement later today acknowledging its Polish unit had been involved in "corrupt activities". A spokeswoman for HP declined to comment.

Polish officials said dozens of people had been charged as part of an industry-wide investigation of corruption dating from 2007 to 2009, among them representatives of major IT companies, government officials and former police officers.

The minister said Poland had cooperated on the investigation with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it illegal for U.S. companies to pay bribes to officials with foreign governments to win business. Firms found to have violated the act have in the past been ordered to pay multi-million-dollar settlements.

Polish prosecutors said their case centred around a former government official who was initially in charge of IT with the national police headquarters, and later became head of the IT Projects Center, a state agency at the Polish Interior Ministry.

Zbigniew Jaskolski, a spokesman for the Appellate Prosecutors' office in Warsaw, which handles major cases, said the official gave favourable treatment for firms, including HP, which were bidding for IT contracts with the police headquarters that were worth a total of $39.71 million. In exchange, the executive in HP's Poland unit, who is no longer with the company, gave the official a payment of $529,500 as well as computer, audio and video equipment worth $36,400, Mr Jaskolski said.

The Appellate Prosecutors’ office named the former government official as Andrzej M, and the former HP executive as Tomasz Z, without giving their full last names in accordance with the Polish law.

The former HP executive also promised the same official a bribe worth $827,400 in exchange for including in the tender documents provisions which favoured bidders designated by the executive, Mr Jaskolski said. Both the former executive and the former official have been charged with offences which carry prison sentences of between two and 12 years, he said.

Mr Sienkiewicz, the Polish interior minister, said the investigation showed there would be consequences if companies operating in Poland, eastern Europe’s biggest economy, did not respect the law.

“It’s a breakthrough moment in Poland when a great international company acknowledges its corrupt activities in Poland,” Mr Sienkiewicz told Polish public radio.

In Warsaw, a spokesman for the Central Anti-Corruption bureau, Jacek Dobrzynski, said the bureau had launched an investigation of major IT companies in Poland in 2011. He said close to 70 charges had been brought against 41 people. (Reuters)