Sweden Charges Four Former Ericsson Employees With Bribery

(Bloomberg) -- Four former employees of Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson AB have been charged with bribery in a district court in Stockholm.

The Swedish citizens are alleged to have bribed Djibouti officials, including the country’s Attorney General, in 2011 and 2012, in an effort to win a contract with Djibouti Telecom SA, according to court documents.

A unit of Ericsson already pleaded guilty to foreign bribery back in 2019, leading the parent company to pay more than $1 billion to resolve a long-running U.S. corruption investigation involving payoffs in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

As part of that settlement, the U.S. government outlined bribery spanning the globe, including about $2.1 million in bribes between 2010 and 2014 to high-ranking Djibouti government officials to obtain a contract with the state-owned phone company.

While the U.S. investigation focused on the company, Sweden’s probe has centered on the individuals behind those bribes. One of the defendants was the head of Ericsson’s Middle East region until 2014, and was part of top management in charge of IT & cloud products until he left in 2017. According to the documents, prosecutors also have evidence that suggests a link to Djibouti’s long-serving president.

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