Swedish telecoms company Ericsson, chief executive Borje Ekholm and its chief financial officer have been named as defendants in a US class action lawsuit for misleading investors about the company's dealings in Iraq, a filing to a New York court said on Friday.
Ericsson is at the centre of a scandal over potential payments to the terrorist group ISIS in Iraq. On Wednesday, the US Department of Justice said it was in breach of a 2019 deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) for failing to fully disclose details of its operations in Iraq.
The filing, by law firm Pomerantz to the District Court of Eastern District of New York, said that Ericsson among other things had misled investors by overstating the extent to which it had eliminated the use of bribes.
Ericsson said in a statement that it and "certain [company] officers" had been named as defendants in connection with "allegedly false and misleading statements" concerning Iraq.
Under the conditions of the 2019 DPA, Ericsson paid more than $1 billion to resolve a series of corruption investigations, involving bribery in China, Vietnam and Djibouti, and agreed to co-operate with the department for investigations.
Ericsson has lost almost a third of its market value since media reports of the alleged bribes broke in February.
Ericsson said that an internal investigation, which ended in 2019 but was only made public in February after media inquiries, had identified payments designed to circumvent Iraqi customs at a time when extremist organisations, including ISIS, controlled some routes.
Empires%20of%20the%20Steppes%3A%20A%20History%20of%20the%20Nomadic%20Tribes%20Who%20Shaped%20Civilization
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EAuthor%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EKenneth%20W%20Harl%3Cstrong%3E%3Cbr%3EPublisher%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EHanover%20Square%20Press%3Cstrong%3E%3Cbr%3EPages%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E576%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
COMPANY PROFILE
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Total funding: Self funded
The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
New schools in Dubai
Some of Darwish's last words
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
