Four managers Victor Muller, Jan-Åke Jonsson, Kristina Geers and a previous company lawyer and a temporary finance director have today been charged by the chief prosecutor for “Grovt försvårande av skattekontroll”, translated into Rough evasion and or making the tax control troublesome or inadequate. A crime that can have the managers in prison from 4 months to 4 years.
Chief prosecutor Olof Sahlgren claims that the five should be charged for together and in a organized way have entered into the bookkeeping two payments of 3.5 million Euros. This has been made through two bogus/false invoices involving a cyprus company.
All five denies criminal intent or action.
Link to a press release from the Swedish Economic Crime Authority
Trued, most of us are not Swedes, can you give us your opinion how serious this is? I.E. how do these cases normally end up? Jonsson is nearing 70, do you think they would really put him in jail? Normally in the U.S. these things end up as fines and house probation at best.
I was wondering the same thing. There are exceptions here, Chris. Depending on the crime, older people do go to the clink, but not often for white collar crimes, unless they are Bernie Madoff. Anyway, none of this surprises me. It’s just another notch on the Saab belt. Incredible but at the same time, predictable.
I think the most probable result is that this will go absolutely nowhere. For starters, for something to be a crime you must prove intent. Another thing that the previous run in this prosecutor had with Muller basically resulted in humiliation.
No doubt more irritations regarding the SAAB car name will crawl out of the woodwork for years to come!
Obviously NEVS were never going to get the name and this problem must have been at the top of SAAB’s list.
NEVS had the name though. Their own incompetence and failures brought us to the point where they are, thankfully, losing permission to use the name. They don’t deserve to have it.