Summer 2013. Cristina Qvarfordt gets responsibility for a road project in Laos. The company she works for has been commissioned by the World Bank and she goes there to start the project. But on location in Laos, both the ministry and their local partners require the partner company to take care of the transport budget.
- I understood that they wanted the budget to buy a car for a man in the ministry. It was a real pressure, I was already prepared and very stressed, says Cristina Qvarfordt for SVT News.
Wrote about mutan in emailFinally, she agrees to transfer the budget. In an angry email to a colleague, she writes:
“... he gets his car that he has been nagging so much about, so he should be happy. A pretty big part of the budget went there. "
And:
"I get so annoyed at him, who tries to make it sound like [the company] is villains who want to get a profit on the project, when he lends himself a car for private use ..."
The email was one of the things that later dropped Cristina Qvarfordt, after an employee reported the project to the World Bank's anti-corruption unit.
A comprehensive investigation was initiated and in 2018 the World Bank had concluded that the company Cristina worked for was most likely guilty of corruption. They are under sanction and will not receive new assignments for the development banks over a three-year period. Cristina Qvarfordt and one of her managers also ended up on the list.
Cristina has chosen to tell her story so that others dare to say no in the future.
What do you think about your own responsibility, that you contributed to corruption?
- Yes, it has hurt me.
No single incidentWould this have come out unless the employee had sounded an alarm?
- No. This is not a single event. Then it had very big consequences for me, that's why I tell you about it. I have a part in it, but was withdrawn without thought of my own gain, says Cristina Qvarfordt.
SVT News has been in contact with the company that does not want to comment on the matter until the sanctions are lifted.