SVT's Assignment Review has for a long time asked a long list of questions to Ericsson's management and CEO Börje Ekholm about their activities in Iraq and the information that emerges in an internal investigation the company conducted in 2019, an investigation that Ericsson did not publish.
But instead of giving some answers to Assignment review, the company chose to publish a press release on its website with certain details from the investigation at 6 pm on Tuesday, in connection with the Stockholm Stock Exchange closing.
According to the press release, the investigation concerns Ericsson's actions in Iraq between 2011 and 2019. The investigation found, among other things, "serious breaches of regulatory compliance and breaches of the Code of Business Ethics" and "corruption-related misconduct".
According to Ericsson, the company suspects that it may have paid bribes to the terrorist organization IS to gain access to "certain transport routes".
Rejects interview
SVT Nyheter has also contacted Börje Ekholm to ask why the company has waited so long to inform about the information in the report and whether the company's management has informed the relevant authorities in the USA and Sweden.
The company's press department writes in an email that: "We have no further comments beyond what is stated in the press release we sent out yesterday, and refuse to participate in an interview."
In an email to Tidningarnas Telegrambyrån, Deputy Chief Prosecutor Martin Bresman at the National Unit against Corruption writes that he expects that Ericsson himself "will report any criminal suspicions that the company has to the police or prosecutors".
Receives criticism from Assignment review
Axel Björklund, project manager and publisher responsible for Assignment review, is critical of the fact that the telecommunications company Ericsson chooses to communicate via a press release instead of answering SVT's questions.
- In principle, it is a bit awkward when we try to be nice and give them plenty of time to answer our questions and really take in the reviewing opponent's arguments and then you answer like this instead, he says.
Axel Björklund does not want to comment on the content of the upcoming Assignment review program.
"You try to take control of the process"
According to Lars Nord, professor at the Department of Media and Communication Science at Mid Sweden University in Sundsvall, it has become increasingly common for companies, authorities and institutions to try to take the edge off a critical review by publishing certain information in advance.
- You do not wait, you try to take control of this process by publishing parts of a story that you perceive as more favorable for your own company or your own organization.
According to Lars Nord, the PR strategy of trying to disarm critical reviews by preceding publications is problematic.
- It is problematic for democracy, openness and transparency.
If you deliberately manipulate and succeed in distorting reality, if you successfully sell your own image of an event and that image is accepted by the media and in the public debate, it is of course a problem, he says.