Economic crime report 2004 - Ekobrottsmyndigheten

When working for a printer’s in 1991, PL learned that the Swedish business
that had ordered an informational brochure was planning to acquire
a stake in an American company. He told ML about it. ML gave the information
to a broker by the name of G, through whom he purchased stock
in the U.S. company. In addition, G had made 21 fictitious purchases of
the Swedish company’s stock in order to improperly raise its price.
In 2001, the Uppsala District Court fined L 80 days income for improperly
influencing share prices. L had submitted exorbitant purchase bids
on two stocks. He had made the purchases to improve his position in a
stock auction. The district court found that L’s actions had led to unreasonable
closing prices, thereby misleading the market. The transactions
had no commercial justification. L’s objective of improving his position in
an auction was improper.
The Stockholm City Court placed a representative of a business on probation
and fined him for insider crime. In 2000, he had taken part in
discussions with the principal shareholders of a listed real estate company
concerning a public offering of all its stock.
Through another subsidiary of the same Group, the representative had
agreed to join a bid consortium in the capacity of an investor. The city
court ruled that, before the public offering had been announced, the
representative had, on the basis of information that had not yet been
released, made several purchases of the real estate company’s stock so as
to substantially and intentionally influence its price. As a result, the stock
price was higher once the public offering had been announced.
2.5.2 Undeclared Work and Other Sector-related Crime
Most of uncollected tax revenue is deemed to stem from various kinds of
evasion related to undeclared work and unreported income for small or
medium-sized businesses. 1 To illustrate the issue, parts of a report compiled
by the Nationwide Project on Monitoring Undeclared Labour in
the Construction Industry (SKV 2001:9) are cited below. The excerpts
highlight the particular risks that crop up when a certain type of illegal
behaviour is incorporated into standard operating procedures. Other contracting
sectors give rise to similar problems.
A great deal of evasion also goes on in cash sectors, i.e., transactions
between businesses and private individuals. Frequently there is no docu-
1.
See Skattefel och skattefusk. RSV Report 1998:3 (Uncollected Revenues and Tax Fraud. RSV Report
1998:3) and Branschsanering. SOU 1997:111 (Sector Reform. SOU 1997:111).
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