At the center of the tangle that will now be unraveled in the Stockholm district court are the CEO and two employees of a business group that dealt with company brokerage. They are charged, among other things, with serious economic money laundering and serious accounting offences.
The business idea was to buy companies with good history and creditworthiness, empty them of assets, and then sell them on. The offer to the sellers, i.e. the original owners, was that for a fee they would be helped to quickly liquidate the company instead of having to go through a more time-consuming liquidation.
Instead of putting down the companies were sold on. In many cases to goalkeepers, bullies and people previously convicted of financial crime, according to the indictment. The companies have since been able to be used for, among other things, VAT fraud, credit fraud and money laundering.
– At the time of the sale, the companies were empty shells, but with registrations and annual reports that say otherwise, says Nathalie Müntzing, preliminary investigation leader and chamber prosecutor at the Ecocrime Authority.
The accused persons are accused of not having made sufficient checks on who bought the companies and where the money came from.
– Their risky way of selling companies has had very big consequences and has been an enabler for serious organized crime, says Nathalie Müntzing.
What responsibility do they have to check who buys the companies?
– A very big responsibility. When you carry out that type of activity, you fall under the Money Laundering Act. Then you are obliged to ensure that your company is not used for money laundering. I mean that based on how they have run their business, they have exposed themselves to a very large risk of being exposed to money laundering, so much so that it is criminal.
Was it deliberate or just indifference?
– My opinion is that they were very aware of what they have done. It has been a business idea to violate companies on a large scale, make a lot of money and ignore all existing regulations.
All of the defendants deny wrongdoing. The accused CEO’s defender, Slobodan Jovicic, believes that his client had no criminal intent, and that he cannot be blamed for the crime that took place in the companies after they were sold.
– My client denies crime and disputes that there was any criminal idea behind this movement, he says.
Two more people with connections to the company are also prosecuted. They too deny wrongdoing.
The suspicions include approximately 1,100 companies that were sold by the company intermediaries for a total of SEK 50 million during the period 2018–2023. The majority of these have been declared bankrupt. The combined debts in the companies amount to around six billion kroner and are mainly tax debts from VAT fraud. Many of the companies are found in separate prosecutions and investigations.
– This case has had points of contact throughout the country, says Nathalie Müntzing.
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