MUNICH, Germany — The Siemens black money affair seems to widen. According to media reports, the affair has been known to the management for about a year. And it looks like there is much more money in the game than so far has been communicated.

According to a Financial Times Deutschland online report, a year ago, Siemens was informed on a related criminal investigation in Switzerland. Siemens now states that it immediately launched an internal probe but did not see the necessity to inform the public.

The affair obviously has a much bigger extension than known hitherto. While last weeks reports mentioned amounts of about €20 million (about $25 million), now are three-digit million numbers in the air. The Focus magazine states that in the context of the ongoing investigations in Austria an account has been identified and frozen in with €60 million on it. And the police in Greece reportedly found €40 million on the account of a Siemens manager. Allegedly, this money was determined to be used as palm-oil.

The investigations focus on Siemens' fixed-line division that presently is undergoing a transformation in order to bring it into a joint venture with Nokia. In terms of projects, the media repeatedly mention the Olympic summer games in Athens in 2004 as a "money sink" for the amounts in question; also the business with Russia, China and countries in the Middle East in general seems to be prone to bribery. Financial Times Deutschland quotes a bank analyst saying that probably all large infrastructure vendors have financial "reserves" for doing business in the respective geographies. "This is part of the normal infrastructure business", the expert said. "If you want to lead the market [in these countries], just about nothing goes without a baksheesh".

Siemens does not comment officially. The company's press people these days are busy to get rid of awkward questions, saying that it is not the company's policy to comment open cases. They only acknowledge what is already known: That last week about 200 police agents and attorneys searched about 30 Siemens locations including the Office of CEO Klaus Kleinfeld, and that the company as well as Kleinfeld in person, are witnesses, not suspects. However, in nthe meantime the company has mandated a Nuremberg law firm to take the function of an Ombudsman. His task is to accept informations from Siemens employees on possible conduct guideline infringement and process these informations.