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Officials were paid $200 a deal: Xerox

Bhupesh Bhandari

The individual payments made by Xerox ModiCorp to government officials to push government purchases ranged between $100 and $200.

"The individual payments made by the company were in the range of $100-200," Paul Arrowsmith, Xerox Corp's spokesman for West Asia, India, Eurasia, Russia and Africa, told Business Standard.

On June 28, Xerox Corp informed the US Securities Exchange Commission that Xerox ModiCorp, its 68 per cent subsidiary in India, had made payments of $600,000-700,000 to push sales to government customers during the year 2000. If each payment was in the range of $100-200, the number of payments during the year could range from 3,000 to 7,000.

Under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, US companies and executives are prohibited from bribing foreign officials.

The Act allows small payments necessary to do business in other countries. Xerox Corp said once it knew about these payments, it put a stop to the practice. It also said such payments were made before 2000 also.

When asked if Xerox Corp would re-state the results of the years during which such payments were found to have been made, Arrowsmith said a decision was taken not to issue any statement till the investigations being carried by the Indian authorities were completed. "We will fully co-operate with the investigations by the Indian government," he said.

B K Modi, former chairman of ModiCorp (the company is now called SpiceCorp and Veena Modi is its chairperson), was not available for comments.

He is currently abroad and is expected to return by mid-July. Meanwhile, two officials of the Department of Company Affairs continued their investigations at Xerox ModiCorp's office at Gurgaon, going through the company's records.

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