2023-09-05 16:52:49
Published5. September 2023, 06:52 PM
Sweden: Gangs allegedly launder money via Spotify
According to a Swedish daily, criminal networks pay for fake streams, processes to artificially increase the number of plays of artists with links to gangs.
While Spotify says it is doing its best to fight fake streams, a gang member can “say with 100% guarantee” that the phenomenon is continuing.
20min/Taddeo Cerletti
Swedish gangs, at the origin of a proliferation of score settling in recent years, are using the Spotify audio platform to launder money, assures a Swedish daily on Tuesday. These criminal networks pay for fake streams, that is to say processes to artificially increase the number of plays of artists with links to gangs, assures “Svenska Dagbladet”.
These fake streams generate revenue paid by the platform to the rights holders, allowing these gangs to launder their money. The daily says it relies on comments from four different gang members in Stockholm and on information from a Swedish police investigator. “I can say with 100% guarantee that it is continuing. I myself was involved” in this manipulation, said one of these members in the newspaper, which dates this practice back to 2019. “We paid people to do this for us, in a systematic way.”
“Spotify has become a cash machine for gangs.”
A Swedish police inspector
According to him, the gangs convert their dirty money into bitcoins, which are used to pay people who generate fake streams. “Svenska Dagbladet” assures that in Sweden, a million streams generate between 40,000 and 60,000 Swedish crowns (from 3,200 to 4,800 francs).
The police investigator quoted by the newspaper assures that he contacted Spotify about this in 2021, but that the company never responded. “Spotify has become a cash machine for gangs,” he says.
The platform protests
The world’s number one online music platform has defended itself, saying it is doing its best to fight against fake streams, and judges that it is “a challenge for the whole sector”. “Less than 1% of the total streams were detected as artificial and quickly downgraded before any payment,” Spotify added, adding that it was not aware of any contact by the police.
Sweden has been struggling to stem a war of gangs for several years, which dispute the trafficking of weapons and drugs with shootings and attacks with explosive devices.
(AFP)
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