All Ericsson’s troubles between Isis, USA and bond

17 February 20222 years ago babelfish

Erics son admitted he may have made payments to ISIS in the past. But that's just the least of the company's troubles. All the details

Ericsson in the storm.

In an interview with the newspaper Dagens industri , Ericsson's chief executive, Borje Ekholm, said the company – a Swedish company involved in telecommunications technologies – may have made payments to the Islamic State in the past to obtain l access to certain transport routes in Iraq.

WHAT THE ERICSSON CEO SAID

Ekholm said Ericcson found "unusual expenses dating back to 2018," but has not yet determined the identity of the final recipient of the money. He added, however, that the "transport routes" purchased by the company passed "through areas that were controlled by terrorist organizations, including ISIS". The Islamic State, or ISIS, declared itself a global caliphate in 2014, and had a particularly strong territorial presence in Iraq.

THE COLLAPSE OF SHARES

After the CEO's admission to Dagens industri , Ericsson's shares fell by almost 14.5 percent yesterday: this is, as Bloomberg reconstructs, the strongest daily decline since July 2017.

ERICSSON'S TROUBLE IN THE UNITED STATES

This is not a good time for the company, which was accused by the US Department of Justice in October of violating a $ 1 billion deal reached with US authorities to end a corruption investigation.

The agreement dates back to 2019: a division of Ericsson pleaded guilty to having carried out, for years, a corruption campaign between Asia and the Middle East; the case was closed with a deal worth 1 billion.

Last October, however, the US Department of Justice accused Ericsson of violating the agreement due to the non-delivery of some documents.

According to analysts at Handelsbanken, the suspicious payments (possibly to ISIS) mentioned by Ekholm would be part of the Justice Department's corruption investigation.

THE BOND OF ERICSSON

Ericsson's bonds to 2029, valued at 500 million euros, fell by 1.2 cents to 92.7 on Wednesday. This is, Bloomberg writes, the strongest daily decline since their issuance last May. The cost of insolvency insurance has reached its highest level since June 2020.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/ericsson-pagamento-sospetto-stato-islamico/ on Thu, 17 Feb 2022 10:46:25 +0000.