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Sweden accused of being too lax on dealing with corruption – especially by Swedish companies abroad

Thursday, 21 June 2012
Sweden is weak in dealing suspected cases of corruption and bribery, the Economic Cooperation Organization, OECD condemned.

The core of the issue is that the legislation in Swedish legal stand point in the field of fighting such crimes will be in place in a week.

The OECD notes that not a single Swedish company indicted for bribery on foreign soil for the past eight years has been brought to book. This, despite the fact that Sweden has many large multinational companies operating in the defence, telecom and energy sectors and that the media have raised allegations of bribery in several instances.

The report which comes from a working group within the OECD is not a good indication for Sweden, a country that pride itself for being the most operations efficiency and law abiding country in the world.
But the working group has found thing pretty different in that side of Sweden.
The group considers that “the absence of criminal cases during this period suggest that there is something wrong in the Swedish system in terms of detection, investigation and prosecution of bribery abroad."

The OECD also provides a number of recommendations for Sweden among others that it should introduce a system of fines which shall also be imposed when foreign intermediaries and agents are involved. It should also be made clear to the common Swede how much it hurt the entire country when charges are brought against Swedish companies abroad. Another recommendation is that the fines for this type of crime are raised significantly. The maximum amount of Skr10 million which is in operation today, according to the OECD, is not enough to be "effective, proportionate and dissuasive".
By Scancomark.se Team

 

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