Procurement Professional is the official publication of CIPS Australasia

Apple procurement manager arrested for bribery

18 Aug 2010

Source: Procurement Leaders

A global supply chain manager for Apple has been arrested as a result of allegedly accepting more than $1 million in bribes and kickbacks from half a dozen Asian suppliers of iPhone and iPod accessories.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Paul Shin Devine is facing both a federal grand jury indictment and a civil suit from Apple following an investigation which implicates Devine for leaking confidential information to key suppliers to enable them to negotiate better contracts with Apple. In exchange, the Apple suppliers made payments to various bank accounts set up in the names of Devine and his wife according to the indictment.

Apple suspected Devine was violating corporate policy and launched an internal investigation that uncovered suspicious e-mails on his company laptop using personal accounts on Hotmail and Gmail. The e-mails divulged sensitive and confidential information to key Apple suppliers.

The operation used an elaborate chain of U.S. and foreign bank accounts and one front company to receive payments, the indictment said, and code words like "sample" were used to refer to the payments so that Apple co-workers wouldn't become suspicious.

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