STOCKHOLM, Sweden-L.M. Ericsson is defending the actions of its employees after the Swedish National Economic Crimes Bureau expanded on the tax evasion charges it filed against Ericsson employees. SNECB filed charges against current and former Ericsson employees earlier this year, but recently added additional information to the charges.
“We see no reason to reconsider our confidence in any of the employees still employed in the group, based on the additional indictment,” said Henry Stenson, senior vice president of Corporate Communications at Ericsson. “No Ericsson employee has gained anything personally from this handling, and there is not reason to believe that any employee would risk imprisonment by trying to evade tax control on behalf of the company.”
Ericsson noted that Lage Carlstrom, chief prosecutor of the SNECB in Stockholm, added concerns to the original indictment-which was filed earlier this year-about the way the accounting of some payments from Ericsson to Bank Austria were handled in 1999 and 2000.
The original charges centered on technical accounting issues related to Ericsson’s system for payments to commercial agents from 1998-2000. The company said in April that it had abandoned the system, and explained that it believes one of its employees mismanaged the system and used it for personal profit. The company filed a criminal complaint in Switzerland against the former employee for misappropriation of funds, with an alternative charge of embezzlement.
The company said it had no reason to suspect any other employees were involved in mismanaging the system.
