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Ericsson CEO Borje Ekholm revealed in an interview with Swedish media Dagens Industri a few days ago that his company found after self-examination that some employees may have made payments to ISIS to make the Iraqi business run smoothly.according toBloomberg NewsCiting Ekholm, Ericsson found “anomalous spending going back to 2018.” While the final recipient of the payment has yet to be determined, after reviewing payment records for the shipping route, Ericsson found that it “includes areas controlled by terrorist groups such as ISIS.”
In fact, Ericsson published astatement, said it would continue to “invest heavily” in its investigation into the compliance of its Iraqi operations. In a statement, Ericsson said an internal investigation that began in 2019 was sparked by unusual expense reimbursements, and the company later found that some employees and suppliers had “serious breaches of compliance” in Iraq. In particular, the costs associated with shipping routes, which Ericsson argues are largely meant to “evade Iraqi customs.”
Following Ericsson’s statement,International Consortium of Investigative Journalists(ICIJ) further stated that Ericsson’s move was to correct some of the misconduct uncovered by the alliance’s global investigation. On this basis, the Alliance will also publish all of its own findings “soon”. Over the past few years, the U.S. government-led crackdown on Huawei has helped Ericsson land a slew of 5G contracts around the world.But at the same time, the company hasscandal. The “tolls” paid to ISIS in Iraq may bring them a lot of trouble again.