Siemens Pays

9:30 AM -- A happy holiday surprise: Siemens AG (NYSE: SI; Frankfurt: SIE) has been enlisted to help with the U.S. budget deficit. The New York Times has the story:

Siemens, the German engineering giant, agreed Monday to pay a record total of $1.6 billion to American and European authorities to settle charges that it routinely used bribes and slush funds to secure huge public works contracts around the world.

The company also pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington to charges that it violated a 1977 law banning the use of corrupt practices in foreign business dealings.

The fines that the company agreed to pay on the American side of the case — $450 million to the Justice Department and $350 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission — dwarf the previous high for a foreign corruption case brought by Washington...

Vielen Danke! Every little bit helps.

“Siemens is closing a painful chapter in its history,” Gerhard Cromme, the Siemens chairman, said in announcing the agreements at a news conference...

Not quite as painful as that whole Nazi slave-labor thing, but considerably more expensive.

In unrelated news, Chairman Cromme has been named to fill President-to-be Obama's former Senate seat in Illinois.

— Larry, Attack Monkey, Light Reading