Ericsson, a Swedish Telecom conglomerate providing a majority of the US’s 5G infrastructure, was recently found to have bribed the Islamic State to the tune of tens of millions of dollars to facilitate their operations in IS-controlled regions and cities.
The results of a leaked internal investigation document revealed the near-opaque dealings of the company in regions globally, ranging from allegedly funding luxury international trips in Sweden and Spain laden with gifts to paying ‘contractors’ with ties to Gulf royal families. The document further depicts abysmal oversight, with millions of dollars unaccounted for. When questioned about these funds, the CEO of Ericsson, Börje Ekholm, claimed that “We can’t determine where money sometimes really goes, but we can see that it has disappeared”. Considering that Ericsson brings in over $25 billion annually, one can only imagine the money that has ‘disappeared’.
Furthermore, this isn’t Ericsson’s first such scandal; a probe by United States authorities resulted in a $1 billion settlement in 2019 – one of the largest of all time. In this case, the U.S Justice Department cited bribery charges in multiple countries from 2000 to 2016. However, no Ericsson employees or executives were criminally tried or sentenced throughout the case.
While the web of lies spun by Ericsson has an undeniably global reach, it is at its most dangerous in Iraq, where regional executives decided that leaving IS-controlled cities would ‘destroy their business’, leading to the kidnapping of a subcontractor’s employee. Most people would also see this as potentially destructive for their business. At the same time, however, the company’s internal probes concluded that they couldn’t determine whether Ericsson had directly funded terrorism or not.
While Ericsson’s business practices in other countries don’t involve as many armed extremist organisations, the company’s dealings are laced with bribery and corruption, with Ericsson itself investigating cases of the same in 15 countries. Despite this, Ericsson continues to bid for contracts in the United States as it is seen as vital in the West’s desire to distance itself from Chinese companies like Huawei – which have reported links to the Chinese Communist Party.
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