Former Mannesmann AG chief executive Werner Dieter has agreed to pay the equivalent of $674,000 demanded by Dusseldorf prosecutors as the price of their ending their investigation of him. Germany is another country and they do things differently there, so the money is not a fine or penalty, and Dieter has made no admission of guilt, which makes the payment sound like a legalized bribe; he says that he merely sought to end negative publicity for himself and the companies concerned, and to avert a trial that could have lasted years; he was under investigation for allegedly having channelled Mannesmann contracts on terms favorable to a family-run company since 1963.
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