AKIPRESS.COM - A judge on September 12 ordered U.S. computer giant Hewlett-Packard to pay US$58.8 million for bribing Moscow government officials to win a big-money contract with Russia's prosecutor general's office.
Northern California US District Judge Lowell Jensen hit HP with the fine after the company pleaded guilty to violating anti-bribery and accounting provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the US Department of Justice said in a release.
According to a negotiated plea bargain, executives in an HP Russia subsidiary created a multi-million-dollar slush fund, from which money was used to bribe Russian officials who awarded the company a US$45 million contract with the Office of the Prosecutor General of Russia.
"Hewlett Packard's Russia subsidiary used millions of dollars in bribes from a secret slush fund to secure a lucrative government contract," principal deputy assistant attorney general Marshall Miller of the Justice Department's Criminal Division said in a release. "Even more troubling was that the government contract up for sale was with Russia's top prosecutor's office," he said.