 Describing the suspects as cooperative, German prosecutors said Friday they were building a solid case against a group of men accused of running slush funds at German company Siemens.
The case, with allegations that bribes were paid to win big contracts in Italy, Greece, Nigeria and elsewhere, has rocked one of the world's biggest electronics and engineering groups.
Siemens said Friday its separate internal inquiry, conducted by a New York based law firm, was well underway.
Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, aided by experts from auditors Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, has been commissioned to discover whether Siemens staff breached the company code of practice on bribery.
It would report exclusively to the Siemens supervisory board audit committee, that panel's chairman, Gerhard Cromme, said.
The last five suspects in custody were released after they gave detailed answers to interrogators, prosecutor Christian Schmidt- Sommerfeld said. Those details had boosted the evidence of misappropriation of Siemens funds, he said.
The prosecutor gave no more details, but police have previously said about 200 million euros (264 million dollars) was moved into slush funds to pay bribes. Siemens says the total sum was 420 million euros, if dummy consultancy contracts offered as inducements were included.
Among those held was Thomas Ganswindt, formerly the Siemens main board member in charge of the telecommunications equipment division. Media reports say he conceded during a week in detention that he had heard of illegal commissions two years ago.
The prosecutors said they would need several more weeks to analyse their interrogation notes and seized documents.
The German news magazine Stern said Friday that a separate inquiry into allegations that Siemens salesmen offered a European Union official a car and cash in 2002 to favour a Siemens tender for a power station in Serbia was making no progress for lack of evidence.
That inquiry was first reported two years ago. All those accused have denied the allegations. Stern said a Siemens internal inquiry found no substance to the claims.
A survey meanwhile indicated that Siemens chief executive Klaus Kleinfeld was getting poor grades from fellow business leaders for his handling of the bribes crisis and this year's failure of Siemens' former mobile-phone-manufacturing division after it was sold to BenQ.
Conducted by Marketing Corporation among 1,000 business leaders, the survey found Kleinfeld at bottom of a class of 14 star German CEOs with a score of 3.9 where 1 is best and 6 is worst.
In a briefing, the survey company chief, Manfred Niedner, said Kleinfeld was given a bad grade for his corporate communications.
Top of the class was Wolfgang Reitzle, chief executive of industrial gases company Linde, with a mark of 1.8.
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