Suspect offers to cooperate
After seeing several suspects in the Siemens bribery scandal taken into custody and following a press report suggesting that he would be the next person to be arrested, Giorgos Trepeklis, a former representative of the US firm that was awarded a security contract for the Athens Olympics, presented himself to the prosecutor yesterday. Trepeklis and his lawyer turned up unannounced at the office of magistrate Nikos Zagorianos yesterday to inform him that he is happy to assist the judge’s inquiries into claims that bribes were paid to public officials and politicians. Trepeklis was paid a commission of 6.5 million euros for helping secure a 250-million-euro contract for a consortium led by the San Diego-based Science Applications International Corporation, or SAIC, in which Siemens Hellas was a local partner. SAIC provided a communications system known as C4I for the Games, but which Greece claims never worked properly and for which it still owes some 40 million euros.
