An international collaboration between Assignment Review, German ZDF and Indian Confluence media reveals how Scania has forged trucks and bribed bus contracts in India.
Assignment review has received emails where an agent reports in detail for gifts and cash he has given to various decision makers.
Another agent has paid out a total of 5.3 million Indian rupees, which then corresponded to just over 730,000 Swedish kronor.
Agent: There are three principles
The email shows how cash was given to a chairman of the board in his home, how money was handed over in a hotel foyer and how a director received the equivalent of almost SEK 10,000 to shop for.
They also reveal how the driver of one of Scania's top executives delivered suspicious bribes.
A third agent says that "not a bus was sold without bribes".
Yet another agent says Scania has three different principles - one for itself, one for its dealer and one for its customer.
- I have said to many of the managers: "you are unethical and unprofessional, you come to India to rob you, you make fun of us", says one of the agents.
Missing payments
Assignment review also visits one of Scania's agents in Delhi, who confirms that he had the task of having contact with decision makers and getting them to choose Scania's buses.
The man claims that several of the assignments took place after verbal agreements, on direct assignments from Scania, which he says became problematic when he suddenly no longer received payment from Scania for his expenses.
But he does not want to take the word bribe in his mouth - and when Assignment review asks more questions about what the expenses were about, he says he does not remember.
- What has happened has happened.
We have left it behind, Scania's actions and the money we lost.
Scania confirms bribes
Scania's CEO Henrik Henriksson confirms that representatives of Scania have used bribes to obtain benefits.
He says that private business partners who have been involved have had their contracts terminated and that employees at Scania who have been involved have been allowed to leave the company
An agent says that not a bus deal was done without bribes, what comment do you have?
- I do not know who this agent is so I can not take a position on it.
But what I can say is that all the cases we have found, and we have gone through all the deals that we have been able to get information on, then we have acted on it, says Henrik Henriksson.
See a longer interview with CEO Henrik Henriksson here:
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"We underestimated the risks" - see the interview with Scania's CEO Henrik Henriksson.
Photo: SVT