The Islamic State jihadist group has the multinational telecommunications company Ericsson in trouble. The reason: he will have to pay a fine of 206 million dollars to the United States court to close an agreement that was reached in 2019 and avoid a trial.
Through this payment, the Swedish company will be able to close a process that took it to court for a scandal of alleged bribery to the jihadist group Islamic State in Iraq.
That year, the Swedish group agreed to pay a $1 billion fine for corruption in five other countries: Djibouti, China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Kuwait.
This other fine is due to the fact that Ericsson did not provide the US courts – whose competence allows it to act against foreign groups – the conclusions of an internal investigation related to bribery.
This investigation reported suspicious payments made between 2011 and 2019 to facilitate road transport in areas controlled by the Islamic State and that would have ended up in the hands of the group at the time when it controlled part of Iraqi territory.
“On numerous occasions, Ericsson did not fully cooperate and failed to disclose evidence and allegations of malpractice, in violation of the 2019 agreement,” the court argued in a press release.
And he added that “companies should know that we will closely examine compliance with all the terms of company resolution agreements and that there will be serious consequences for those that do not comply with their commitments.”
However, the Iraqi case is also being investigated in the Swedish courts, in the midst of a difficult business moment for that multinational. And it is that Ericsson, which employed 105 thousand people worldwide in 2022, announced last week that it would eliminate 8,500 jobs.
Ericsson announced that its annual results in 2022 were disappointing, amid a context of slowdown in the global economy and inflation. Meanwhile, the Swedish group is waging a tough battle internationally with the Chinese company Huawei and the Finnish Nokia to build 5G networks.