afrol News, 20 April - Two former Siemens managers have been found guilty by a Munich court, for breach of trust and bribery for the roles they played in a corruption scandal, partly in Nigeria, that rocked the German engineering group.

The funds were used to bribe government officials and business contacts to win contracts in amongst others, Nigeria and Russia.

The court today found Michael Kutschenreuter, former financial head of Siemens' telecoms unit and Hans-Werner Hartmann, the former head of accounting in the same telecoms unit, guilty and handed them suspended sentences as well as hefty fines.

The court gave Mr Kutschenreuter, a two years suspended sentence and a fine of euro 160,000, while Mr Hartmann was handed a one and a half year suspended sentence and fined to pay euro 40,000 to charity.

Siemens is said to have discovered that about euro 1.3 billion was made between 2000 and 2006 from its coffers in scanty deals.

The case is said to have been one in a series that are yet to come, involving some over 300 employees of the company in a scandal that is said to cost the company around euro 2.5 billion in fines, investigations and back taxes.

In 2008, Siemens had agreed to pay US$ 1.3 billion to end corruption probes in the United States and Germany.