Ex-Ericsson employee tells of bribes for contracts

Liss Olof Nenzell, who was formerly employed at Ericsson and described to have insight in the company's most confidential payments, has said he hand over the documents on Ericsson's operations to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), writes Sveriges Radio. According to the report, the company made payments to a bank account in Panama during the autumn of 1999. According to the documents which Ekot (a program at Sveriges Radio) have seen, the account was controlled by Costa Rica's then president, Miguel Angel Rodriguez. At the same time as this was happening, Ericsson was competing for a national telecom contract in Costa Rica. According to Nenzell, Ericsson gave him orders to destroy the documents in question, however, he didn’t. He explains that the documents contain information about payments made by Ericsson to government officials in several countries. These were allegedly made in order to win contracts, the report continues. Ericsson comments on the report on their website statin: “Ericsson disagrees with the claims made in the Swedish media that the company would have used bribes in a deliberate and systematic way. We cannot guarantee that individual employees have never, or will, act in violation of our Code of Business Ethics. What we can do is to make sure we always take appropriate action when we have information proving wrong-doing. Ericsson has a zero tolerance policy for corruption and bribery and take these matters seriously.”