Looking Back: The Siemens Scandal
Bribe, Swindle or Steal
Alexandra Addison-Wrage of TRACE International
4.9 • 582 Ratings
🗓️ 11 October 2023
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jessica Tillipman of George Washington Law School covers the highlights and key points from the Siemens bribery case of 2008. It was a startling case at the time and divided the international enforcement landscape into the world before and after Siemens. (This episode was originally published in 2020.)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the podcast, bribe, swindle, or steel. |
| 0:09.1 | I'm Alexandra Rogge, and today we're going to discuss the Siemens case, which stunned |
| 0:13.4 | the compliance community back in 2008. |
| 0:15.9 | My guest is Jessica Tillapen. |
| 0:17.4 | Jessica is assistant dean and professorial lecturer at the George Washington |
| 0:20.9 | University Law School. Prior to joining GW, she worked in Jenner-on-Block's Washington |
| 0:25.2 | office in the firm's government contracts and white-collar criminal defense practice group. |
| 0:30.1 | Jessica is a senior editor with a very popular FCPA blog. Jessica, thank you for joining me today. |
| 0:35.8 | Thank you for having me. I'm a huge fan of the podcast. |
| 0:39.2 | The Siemens scandal. |
| 0:40.8 | The then director of the SEC called Seaman's Pattern of Bribery, quote, unprecedented in scale and geographic reach. |
| 0:47.7 | Can you just take us through it? |
| 0:50.1 | When I think of FCPA enforcement, I really do view it as a pre-Seamens world and a post-Semons world. |
| 0:58.3 | To me, that is why this case is so incredible. |
| 1:01.2 | And the impact it had on the FCPA enforcement and compliance community was just so profound |
| 1:06.4 | that really, I feel like we had the pre-Seamins years in enforcement. |
| 1:10.1 | And then post, you know, |
| 1:11.6 | 2008, things really did shift. That gives you a little bit of a sense of the gravity of this case. |
| 1:17.3 | For anyone who's not familiar with the Siemens case, I strongly encourage you to take a look, |
| 1:22.5 | this incredible article in the New York Times called At Siemens Bribery was just a line item. It's an article I've |
| 1:29.0 | actually been assigning to my students for about a decade now. It really has this great |
| 1:34.1 | backstory on Siemens. It follows the adventures of this mid-level manager in Siemens, |
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