Argentine judge Adolfo Bagnasco has indicted several former and current executives of the local unit of IBM Corp on charges of defrauding the state in connection with a $249m contract to modernize computers at state-owned Banco de la Nacion (CI No 2,870). He stopped short, however, of bringing bribery charges against any of the 30 people named in the indictment. According to news agencies, he froze assets valued at $1m each of former IBM Argentina president Ricardo Martorana and former Banco de la Nacion Argentina chief Aldo Dadone. Others named in the indictment were several ex-directors of Banco Nacion, Gustavo Soriani, IBM Argentina’s former vice-president of operations, and Juan Carlos Cattaneo, a former deputy cabinet secretary to President Carlos Menem. Judge Bagnasco’s findings come eight months after Argentine tax authorities uncovered $21m in allegedly irregular payments made by IBM to a pair of little- known software companies. These companies in turn made payments into bank accounts in New York, Uruguay and Switzerland that were nominally held by a dead man, a pizza waitress and a rugby coach.
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