A spokesman for German chemicals giant BASF has confirmed some employees and external firms are being investigated on suspicion of false invoicing. The damage done is estimated to be substantial, newspaper reports say.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/U. Anspach
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BASF confirmed Monday that German authorities were investigating employees of the chemicals multinational firm, with the probe also affecting a number of external companies in connection with fraudulent invoicing.
The probe is led by prosecutors in the German city of Kaiserslautern. According to the Rheinpfalz newspaper, external partners had for years received money for work at BASF's facility in Ludwigshafen that was never actually carried out.
According to a BASF spokesman, the fraud also involved four employees from the company itself.
Looking at the damage done
The sums involved in the scandal are said to run into millions of euros, with the Rheinpfalz reporting that investigators are talking about a double-digit-million figure illegally obtained through fake invoices.
Prosecutors confirmed the probe relating to bribery and corruption now focused on the four BASF employees thought to be involved in the scandal. Newspaper reports said one of the four staff in question had since died, with the Rheinpfalz insisting the perosn had committed suicide.
A first series of raids took place in late January when prosecutors searched the homes and offices of employers from some external companies, also seizing documents from workers at BASF itself.
Chemical industry giant BASF turns 150
Foundation, fusion, destruction, re-foundation - BASF's corporate history, like that of the nation from which it emerged, has had periods of genius and periods of deep darkness. Its mission now: Engineering the future.
Image: BASF SE
A global corporate player
There's no corporation in the chemical industry that has bigger revenues or a larger market cap than BASF. Sales in 2014 amounted to a hefty 74.3 billion euros ($79.9 billion). The company has 113,000 employees in more than 80 countries. The corporate HQ is in western Germany at Ludwigshafen am Rhein (pictured). BASF has more than 390 production sites around the world.
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A business built on byproducts
BASF was founded on April 6, 1865, by Friedrich Engelhorn, under the name of Badische Anilin- und Sodafabrik (later BASF). Engelhorn had already been running a factory for several years that supplied the city of Mannheim with gas for its street lamps. A byproduct was coal tar. Engelhorn decided to found BASF to produce tar-based and aniline dyes for the textile industry.
Image: BASF SE
Materials for making fertilizer and gunpowder
Since the turn of the 20th century, thanks to R&D by German chemists Fritz Haber und Carl Bosch, it has been possible to produce ammonia on an industrial scale. That's a key ingredient for both fertilizer and explosives. During the first world war, BASF produced explosives, gunpowder, and poison gas for the German military.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Philipp Schulze
Chemical industry consolidation
The European economy pace of recovery after the first world war was rather slow. The German chemical industry's main firms had already collaborated loosely since 1916, in support of the German war effort. In 1925, BASF fused with five other firms, including Hoechst and Bayer, to form I.G. Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft (I.G. Farben). Pictured: I.G. Farben's then-HQ in Frankfurt (Main).
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Complicity in making weapons of mass destruction
I.G. Farben collaborated with the Nazi regime. The company made extensive use of forced labor, including concentration camp prisoners. Pictured: The I.G. Farben facility at Auschwitz-Monowitz, where Zyklon B poison gas was produced. The gas was originally meant to serve as an insecticide, but the Nazis ended up using it in the death camps to murder millions of human beings.
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BASF in ruins
Allied troops occupied I.G. Farben's Ludwighafen factory in March 1945. It had already been largely destroyed by aerial bombing. In the same year, the four occupying powers confiscated the company's entire capital stock. In the Soviet occupation zone, the company's factories were dismantled and shipped East, or nationalized. In November 1945, the Allied control council dissolved I.G. Farben.
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Resurrection
On January 30, 1952, eleven companies were created out of the ruined legacy of I.G. Farben, among them several future major-league players: Agfa, Bayer AG, Hoechst AG, and BASF. Initially, BASF focused mostly on making plastics. Over the decades that followed, BASF broadened its product range and built more and more production facilities around the world. It became a global company.
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An all-round chemical industry player
BASF's product range is huge: Paints and varnishes, styrofoam, insulation materials, medicines, light stabilizers, vehicle battery materials, adhesives and more. The company invests heavily in research - for example in organic solar cells (pictured). The company's 2014 research budget was around 1.8 billion euros.
Image: BASF SE
Chemicals sales
A large fraction of BASF's sales consist of chemicals and production materials for other industries, including construction, pharmaceutical, textile, and automobile industries. BASF materials used in the renovation of London's Underground (pictured), for example, include tunnel boring machines, robotic machines for rock-wall support construction, spray concrete and fire protection coatings.
Image: BASF SE
Surprising sidelines
Public awareness of BASF's wide range of businesses is limited. Few people know, for example, that BASF is not only the world's biggest chemical industry company, but also one of Germany's biggest wine sellers. The company sold about 900,000 bottles in 2013 alone. The cellars of the wine sales subsidiary, more than 100 years old, feature more than 2,000 different wines.
