IBM's Moscow offices raided in embezzlement investigation

On Wednesday, a team of Russian investigators and a squad of masked, rifle-toting police raided IBM's Moscow offices. Big Blue is currently under investigation in the Russian Federation for allegedly having stolen money from the country's $57 billion pension fund. The Russian Interior Ministry accused IBM and two local software companies of committing conspiracy "to rig auctions and embezzle some of the 1 billion rubles ($38 million) of budget money allocated to the funds for new computers," reports Bloomberg. The spokeswoman of one of the other companies under investigation, R-Style Softlab, said that riot police were deployed at the company's offices for 10 hours yesterday, and "made copies of some documents, took the list of our contacts and copied some electronic mail." This reminds us an awful lot of that Siemens raid that took place last month -- is there some crazy European embezzlement epidemic going on that we should know about?

[Via The Register]

Read - Bloomberg
Read - IDG News Service
Read - The Associated Press

[CM @ Dec 8th 2006 3:48AM]

Hard to tell who is more corrupt in Russia - the government or big business. It could be just that someone at IBM stepped on the toes on someone in government, and this is how they get repaid. Or maybe they are up to some funny business. Who knows?

[Tyler @ Dec 8th 2006 3:56AM]

Honestly, it's not that hard to tell. Didn't the Russian government recently "allegedly" kill a former spy turned defector, and a journalist the month before that. Didn't they also recently forcibly nationalize a private oil company, Yukos or Gazprom, I always forget? Sounds to me like they're interested in nationalizing computers. That, or this one's for Kasparov.

[Ross @ Dec 8th 2006 4:00AM]

Although IBM very well could be embezzling, it's hard to know for sure. Just can't trust the Russian government, and it's only getting worse.

[Baz @ Dec 8th 2006 4:14AM]

"is there some crazy European embezzlement epidemic going on that we should know about?"

IBM is an American company, with apparently shady book-keeping practices. All very American I would say.

[mack @ Dec 8th 2006 4:33AM]

"is there some crazy European embezzlement epidemic "
You should know that russia is not in Europe. That's just "wild east".

[Xavier Gill @ Dec 8th 2006 4:38AM]

"is there some crazy European embezzlement epidemic going on that we should know about?"

Yeah its called communism! But seriously the differnce in Europe is that we arrest business criminals whereas you Americans give them positions in government, like Rumsfeld, or you give them 2 weeks notice so they can shred up all the evidence like Enron

[Russian Spy @ Dec 8th 2006 4:40AM]

http://www.russianspy.org/2006/12/08/russian-authorities-suspect-ibm-corp-of-fraud/

Russian authorities suspects IBM company of business fraud involving also Russian national pension fund and IBM local partners R-Style and Lanit.

[chuck @ Dec 8th 2006 7:32AM]

It�s not embezzlement as such, really. Everybody�s talking about kick-backs from IBM/others to Russian ministers, so the word is �corruption�. Wanna know what IBM sold those poor guys in the State Pension Fund? AS/400!!! Don�t laugh, the word is IBM revitalized assembly lines for AS/400 in some god forsaken country. No wonder no one is happy about it.

[[e-mail] @ Dec 8th 2006 8:00AM]

Chuck, You obviously have not kept up with the $2B IBM has invested to keep the System i current (it has not been called AS/400 for over 7 years now). This amazing system can run i5/OS, Linux, Windows, and Unix all at the same time and scales from a little desktop to machines 4x more powerful than the biggest mainframe. You may want to go to www.ibm.com/systems/i and do a little catching up.

[ScrewM$ @ Dec 8th 2006 11:43AM]

ALL AMERICAN COMPANIES PLEASE REPORT TO THE HOMELAND IMMEDIATELY> MOSCOW IS TAKING OVER YOUR COMPANY AND PROFITS AND TRADE SECRETS.
In other words your screwed. They did it to oil, now digits.

[kerunt @ Dec 8th 2006 3:01PM]

"Yeah its called communism! But seriously the differnce in Europe is that we arrest business criminals whereas you Americans give them positions in government, like Rumsfeld, or you give them 2 weeks notice so they can shred up all the evidence like Enron"

Russia is not communist you idiot!
God damn, when are you dumb Americans going to grow up?

[Fuumin @ Dec 10th 2006 9:45PM]

Hey, calm down. Let's cool it with the America-hating for a bit. The guy you're replying to obviously wasn't even American anyway, judging from his use of "you Americans."

No country is immune from big business corruption... or from the comments of stupid individuals residing within.

Sorry I missed it if your post was merely sarcasm.

[Digital Traveler @ Dec 8th 2006 3:39PM]

embezzlement? Russia seems to be gettin it's share of negative publicity. Please, I wouldn't not go there cause of all the bad stuff you here, the place is simply astonishing to visit!

[Ian @ Dec 9th 2006 3:32AM]

"Russia is not communist you idiot!
God damn, when are you dumb Americans going to grow up?"

Hey, idiot. Re-read his post. The part with "europe," "we" and "you americans."

Reading comprehension: it's not just for nerds.

[Tyler @ Dec 9th 2006 9:43PM]

A lot of anti-American sentiment here -- nothing new, just surprising that within ten posts it went all to hell. For the record, IBM is a multinational company, not an American one. The UN has its headquarters in New York too, you know.

Also, if the news posts on this site are to be believed, Europe doesn't arrest ALL of its criminals, some of them get to escape to America and crash their stolen sports cars.

How is it that America is on the chopping block of the intellectually lazy/short sighted? It's not all bad, I guess. If every idiot hates you, you're doing something right.