Siemens is a German multinational industrial conglomerate, operating in more than 190 countries across energy, infrastructure, mobility, healthcare, and automation. The company has been hit with massive corruption scandals—paying over $1.6 billion in fines after pleading guilty to bribery across continents. Siemens has consistently outsourced parts of its supply chain to countries with poor labor protections, exposing workers to exploitation and hazardous conditions. It has also backed gas- and coal-based infrastructure, fueling the climate crisis.
In Palestine, Siemens plays a direct role in supporting Israeli apartheid infrastructure. It was contracted to build converter stations for the EuroAsia Interconnector, an electrical link that will transmit electricity produced in Israel (including via gas) to illegal settlements in the West Bank. Siemens Mobility also supplies trains for the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem A1 route that runs into occupied territory and installs traffic control systems on roads restricted to Palestinians. These projects embed Siemens in the settler-colonial economy. Siemens has refused to sever ties despite sustained pressure from Palestinian rights groups. Its brand has been explicitly targeted under the BDS movement.
Siemens earns a High Impact rating because its harm is global, systemic, and mission-critical. The company’s bribery culture, exposed in one of the largest corporate corruption cases in history, signals institutional disregard for rule of law and human or environmental rights. It fuels the climate crisis by supplying fossil fuel infrastructure. In Palestine, its direct involvement projects power and transportation services into occupied territory, legally enabling Israeli settlement expansion.
By supplying the infrastructure that enforces segregation, surveillance, and denial of basic rights, across roads, trains, and electricity lines, Siemens acts as a structural partner to apartheid. Consumer actions in countries like the UK and activist targeting of its offices in Cambridge reflect its high symbolic and practical visibility. For BDS and justice movements, Siemens represents economic levers of dispossession and is a strategic boycott priority.