The Swedish telecommunications equipment giant Ericsson will pay a fine of 206.7 million dollars to the American courts to be able to settle a corruption case in Iraq.
“Ericsson will pay a fine of 206,728,848 dollars” (195 million euros), announced the group in a press release published overnight from Thursday to Friday, which specifies that this arrangement closes the transactional agreement (“Deferred prosecution agreement “) concluded in December 2019. As part of this agreement, the group had already paid a billion dollars to the American courts in December 2019 to close corruption proceedings in five other countries (Djibouti, China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Kuwait ).
“This resolution is a stark reminder of the historic misconduct that led” to the DPA transactional agreement, group boss Börje Ekholm reacted in a statement. “We have learned from this and embarked on an important journey to transform our culture,” he said. Ericsson had already recognized “unacceptable behavior” and assured that he had worked hard against the risk of corruption.
The Swedish company had already provisioned some 220 million dollars for this new fine. The affair broke out in February 2022 ahead of the publication of a vast press investigation coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). This forced Ericsson to make public the conclusions of an internal investigation dating from 2019, identifying facts of possible corruption in the group’s Iraqi activities over the previous eight years. The internal investigation notably evokes suspicious payments for road transport in areas controlled by the Islamic State organization, suspected of having ended up in the pockets of the jihadist group when it controlled part of the Iraqi territory. In mid-April, Ericsson had deemed “probable” new fines imposed by the US Department of Justice, whose universal jurisdiction in many areas allows it to prosecute many foreign groups. This Iraqi file, which has embarrassed the group since 2022, is also the subject of an investigation in Sweden.
“Ericsson will pay a fine of 206,728,848 dollars” (195 million euros), announced the group in a press release published overnight from Thursday to Friday, which specifies that this arrangement closes the transactional agreement (“Deferred prosecution agreement “) concluded in December 2019. As part of this agreement, the group had already paid a billion dollars to the American courts in December 2019 to close corruption proceedings in five other countries (Djibouti, China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Kuwait ). “This resolution is a stark reminder of the historic misconduct that led” to the DPA transactional agreement, group boss Börje Ekholm reacted in a statement. “We have learned from this and embarked on an important journey to transform our culture,” he said. Ericsson had already recognized “unacceptable behavior” and assured that he had worked hard against the risk of corruption. The Swedish company had already provisioned some 220 million dollars for this new fine. The affair broke out in February 2022 ahead of the publication of a vast press investigation coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). This forced Ericsson to make public the conclusions of an internal investigation dating from 2019, identifying facts of possible corruption in the group’s Iraqi activities over the previous eight years. The internal investigation notably evokes suspicious payments for road transport in areas controlled by the Islamic State organization, suspected of having ended up in the pockets of the jihadist group when it controlled part of the Iraqi territory. In mid-April, Ericsson had deemed “probable” new fines imposed by the US Department of Justice, whose universal jurisdiction in many areas allows it to prosecute many foreign groups. This Iraqi file, which has embarrassed the group since 2022, is also the subject of an investigation in Sweden.