Seems like a week doesn’t go by without Chinese insurgent equipment provider Huawei being accused of something. Today it’s corruption again, this time in Austria. The business magazine Format has alleged that Huawei displaced Nokia Siemans and Ericsson for several contracts at Telekom Austria by doing improper things with a publicity consultant by the name of Peter Hochegger. Allegedly this Horleggor fellow got 10% of any contract he helped secure. At €60M or so in contracts, that was a heck of a windfall.
Hochegger is already under investigation for getting paid too much by Telekom Austria as a PR consultant. Just how he secured them seems to be unsaid at this point, and I’m not quite sure why they’re calling the payments to Hochegger bribes since the contracts weren’t his to give. If it were DC, his title would be lobbyist, right? He sounds like he’ll do well in politics someday. Actually, there’s probably a lot more to the story that we don’t know yet. But if it weren’t Huawei, I’ll bet there’d be a lot fewer people nosing around.
Telekom Austria, now under different management, has launched an internal investigation and is aggressively distancing itself from whatever it was that happened. They’re shocked, shocked I tell you. Corruption in big telecom contracts with national incumbent providers? Scandalous!
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Categories: ILECs, PTTs · Telecom Equipment
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Although there are lots of proven cases of corruption, I think the industry is generally clean. Competitive markets leave little money left over for greasing palms.