FRANKFURT - OTE, Greece's largest telecom group and partly owned by Deutsche Telekom, may sue Siemens for damages over alleged overcharging, German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported.

OTE has contacted lawyers in Germany and Greece to examine and prepare all necessary steps, which include a claim for damages, the paper said in a preview of an article to be published on Saturday, quoting OTE.

Siemens was not immediately available for comment.

Earlier this week, former Siemens manager Reinhardt Siekaczek told a court that he had been asked by superiors to construct a slush-fund network to disguise payments to foreign telecoms companies after such bribes became illegal in Germany in 1998.

Such payments may have helped Siemens' telecoms equipment division -- of which OTE was a major customer -- win contracts against rivals such as Cisco, Nokia and Ericsson.

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