The investigation into corrupt practices of Microsoft employees and partners continues.

On Wednesday evening, Microsoft acknowledged that a months-long investigation into bribery of foreign officials and partners in China, Bulgaria and Italy had been extended to Russia and Pakistan.

Photo: REUTERS/Robert Galbraith/Files, Reuters

The Wall Street Journal reported that the investigation into corrupt practices of Microsoft Corp. employees and partners, launched by US authorities in March, is wider than previously thought. According to her, the investigation, which previously focused on the corporation’s activities in Italy, China and Bulgaria, was extended to two more countries - Russia and Pakistan.

Let us recall that the investigation was launched in March by the US Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Information about this also first appeared in The Wall Street Journal. According to the newspaper, investigators were interested, in particular, in information that a number of employees of the Romanian Ministry of Communications and Telecommunications, as well as numerous Microsoft partners in Italy, received money and expensive gifts from the corporation. She also paid for the holidays of many officials. As for China, officials there received regular payments for concluding contracts with Microsoft. The Ministry of Justice received information about this from a former employee of a corporation in China, who stated that he personally transported large sums of money to the offices of officials.

And on Wednesday, the WSJ reported that the investigation into the corruption activities of Microsoft employees abroad is no longer limited to the three named countries, and work is also being carried out in the Russian and Pakistani directions.

According to the newspaper, in Russia, in particular, one of the informants reported that local resellers of the company's software paid a large bribe to senior employees of one of the state companies in exchange for concluding a contract. In Pakistan, a number of local officials were actually on the payroll of Microsoft. The WSJ does not disclose the name of the Russian company, although it claims that its journalists have familiarized themselves with the documents submitted for investigation.

The US Department of Justice and the SEC did not comment on the situation, but the fact that the investigation was expanding was actually acknowledged by one of the corporation’s most senior lawyers, John Frank. The Microsoft vice president and deputy head of the company's legal department made this admission in a blog post .

“Like any large corporation with operations around the world, we occasionally receive reports of potential violations by our employees or partners. We thoroughly investigate them, regardless of the source of information,” Mr. Frank wrote. He said the corporation "takes the allegations seriously and is cooperating fully with the government in its investigation."

Ivan Nikolsky

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