Economic crime report 2004 - Ekobrottsmyndigheten

loan prohibition, the Accounting Act and the provisions of the Companies
Act on liquidation and shortage of capital. The persistence of the
abuse is largely due to the failure of cooperating agencies to address the
problems aggressively enough, such as by adopting measures based on
existing provisions of the law. The task force pondered the question of
who would be in a position to ensure that current civil, criminal and tax
regulations are enforced in the effort to thwart the founders of spurious
shelf companies. No agency has overall supervisory responsibility for such
enforcement.
One of the first links of the chain in the interagency struggle against
economic crime, the Swedish Companies Registration Office is in charge
of registering shelf companies and verifying by means of accountant and
bank certificates that the initial share capital is properly deposited. The
agency currently lacks the authority to investigate whether every registered
shelf company actually has at least SEK 100,000 in share capital.
3SKV comes into contact with spurious founders of shelf companies not
only directly when auditing their activities, but indirectly when the sold
companies and their representatives fail to meet their tax and fee obligations.
SKV also becomes acquainted with shelf companies when they register
for VAT, preliminary company tax and as employers. KFM, which
deals with shelf companies when they are the targets of collection, can
apply for bankruptcy proceedings. It is also the supervisory authority in
bankruptcy.
Receivers in bankruptcy who become familiar with shelf companies can
call attention to illicit distribution of profits, illegal loans and the like that
may warrant prosecution.
The police, public prosecutor and EBM normally deal with shelf companies
and spurious founders when the tax authorities and receivers in
bankruptcy report them for having engaged in illegal activities.
The task force proposed a number of measures to combat abuse, and the
Swedish Economic Crimes Council extended its mandate to work on and
gather resources for implementing them. The measures are broken down
into two basic categories. The first category involves providing information
about the content of the report to employees of the cooperating
agencies, founders of shelf companies, accountant’s organizations and
accountants for chains of shelf companies. Hopefully that will have a
preventive effect and alter the behaviour of those involved. The second
category entails using existing legislation to prosecute people who participate
in spurious shelf company dealings.
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