A. Carl Kotchian, the former president of Lockheed Aircraft Corp. whose admission of paying millions of dollars in bribes to foreign government officials led to the imprisonment of Japan's prime minister and political upheaval in several countries in the 1970s, has died. He was 94.
Kotchian, who had been ill with ailments related to aging, died Dec. 14 at Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City, said his son, Robert Kotchian.
Kotchian was a key figure in what became one of the biggest bribery scandals ever. His testimony before a Senate committee in 1976 later contributed to sweeping reforms and passage of U.S. laws against Americans and U.S. firms paying off foreign government officials.
His admission had dramatic political reverberations overseas. It led to the downfall of Japan's ruling government, discredited the Dutch monarchy and set off official inquiries in Colombia, Turkey, Italy, West Germany and Saudi Arabia.
The Senate probe eventually revealed that payoffs, bribes and kickbacks had been part of doing business overseas for American companies for decades. Although Lockheed and Kotchian received the brunt of the attention, more than 400 U.S. companies eventually admitted to paying foreign officials more than $700 million, or more than $2.5 billion in today's money.
In a memoir published only in Japan, Kotchian said Lockheed was a scapegoat and that the payoffs -- common throughout the 1960s and early 1970s -- were part of the way the "game" was played overseas. He maintained that no payoffs were made to American officials and no American laws were violated.
"If we were back in those times, I'd do it again," Kotchian said in an interview with the Associated Press in 1978. "In present times, with the change in attitude and standards that are being applied now, I don't think that I would."
The scandal overshadowed a notable aviation career that spanned 35 years and paralleled Lockheed's rise to become one of the biggest aerospace companies in the world. Kotchian was president of Lockheed when it was still headquartered in Burbank and before it merged with Martin Marietta Corp. The company's headquarters then moved to Bethesda, Md.
"He was a widely admired leader, a dynamic individual who greatly contributed to the growth of Lockheed over a very long period of time," said Sherman N. Mullin, former president of the Skunk Works Corp., Lockheed's advanced development subsidiary.
