By Supantha Mukherjee
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – An internal investigation by Scania into its Indian operations found evidence of employee misconduct, including senior management, the Swedish bus and truck manufacturer said on Wednesday, adding that all individuals involved had left the company.
The news comes after three media outlets, including the Swedish news channel SVT, reported that Scania paid bribes to win bus contracts in seven Indian states between 2013 and 2016.
A Scania spokesman said the company, part of Volkswagen AG’s commercial vehicle arm, Traton SE, started its internal investigation in 2017. The results were not previously disclosed.
“This misconduct included alleged bribery, bribery through business partners and misrepresentation,” he said, without giving further details.
SVT’s allegations included that Scania delivered a specially equipped bus to a company with connections to India’s Minister of Transport, Nitin Gadkari, which was destined for her daughter’s wedding and was not fully paid.
“Gadkari and his family have absolutely nothing to do with buying or selling the bus,” said Gadkari’s office in a statement.
“As the entire episode of the Scania bus is an internal matter for the Swedish company, it will be prudent for the media to wait for an official statement from Scania India that addressed the issue,” he added.
Scania’s spokesman said the company did not sell a bus to Gadkari and declined to comment further.
Scania’s CEO, Henrik Henriksson, told SVT that the company stopped selling city buses in India and closed its factory there.
“We may have been a little naive, but we really left … we really wanted to do this in India, but we underestimated the risks,” he said.
Henriksson said that any offense in India was committed by some individuals who had left the company, and all business partners involved had their contracts canceled.
The Scania spokesman said his investigation into the irregularities did not involve the police.
“While the evidence is sufficient to prove violations of compliance with Scania’s own business codes so that the company can take severe compliance measures, the evidence is not strong enough to lead to prosecution,” said the spokesman.
($ 1 = 8,4990 SEK)
(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee and Helena Soderpalm in Stockholm. Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Mark Potter)