The Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson will pay a fine of 206.7 million dollars (195 million euros) to the North American judiciary to complete a corruption case that took place in Iraq.
Ericsson pays $206.7 million finethe Swedish business group announced in a statement released in the early hours of Friday.
The statement explains that the (court) decision ends the Deferred Prosecution Agreement that was initially reached in December 2019 with the US legal system.
Previously, the group had already paid a $1 million fine in the United States to end proceedings in US courts in five countries: Djibouti, the People’s Republic of China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Kuwait.
The illegal practices in these five countries aimed at consolidating businesses took place between 2010 and 2016.
In practice, the fine of 206 million dollars (195 million euros) imposed by the United States on Ericsson was for violating the transparency agreement signed in 2019 with the US authorities following allegations of bribery in several countries.
As part of the resolution, the Swedish company committed in 2019 to apply a series of monitoring mechanisms, but failed to do so correctly because it failed to provide “all data and evidence” related to bribery schemes, particularly in Djibouti and the Republic. China, the US Justice Department said in a statement.
Ericsson has not released evidence and information about activities in Iraq that could violate anti-bribery law, which would prevent the United States from conducting a proper investigation and make the prosecution process difficult, the same note says.
US lawyer Damian William said the Swedish company “has not learned its lesson” because it is “paying a high price for the mistakes it continues to make”.
In 2022, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released news showing that Ericsson had allegedly sought permission from the Islamic State terror group to continue operating in Mosul, southern Iraq, controlled by Islamist extremists.
However, these allegations are not directly mentioned in the US court’s indictment.
On Thursday, Borje Ekholme, the Swedish group’s top manager, said the company is “very different” from the one accused of bribery, as it has made many changes since 2017.
Ekholme added that an internal investigation found that Ericsson was not responsible for payments to terrorist organizations in Iraq.
Source: DN
