The Hindu : Govt. issues fresh notice to Xerox ModiCorp

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 17, 2002

Business

Business

Govt. issues fresh notice to Xerox ModiCorp

NEW DELHI JULY 16. The Government is understood to have issued a notice to the Indian arm of Xerox Corporation, involved in a bribery scam, to submit its accounts by July 23 while rejecting the suggestion to sign a confidentiality agreement. "We have not got original vouchers, cash books and registers. Their cooperation is more on papers,'' sources in the Department of Company Affairs said adding that non-compliance of the fresh notice under Sec.209 could lead to prosecution of the directors of Xerox ModiCorp.

The Government had ordered a probe on July 3 into accounts after the parent company admitted that Xerox ModiCorp had made improper payment of $700,000 to government officials in 2000 to promote business.

Sources said that scope of DCA probe was for five years, including three years preceding 2000, the year for which bribes were acknowledged by Xerox in its annual report submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Xerox had said that it came to know about the improper payments only after acquisition of majority stake in Xerox ModiCorp in 1999 from the B. K. Modi group, which has been maintaining a total silence on the issue.

Earlier the company had approached the DCA suggesting that a confidentiality agreement be signed on the lines of the one signed by the parent company with the SEC in the U.S. The DCA rejected the proposal on the ground that there was no such precedent. — PTI

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