Skip to main content
Menu Icon
Close

InfoBytes Blog

Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

Swedish Prosecutor Charges Russian Sales Executive with Bribery of Azerbaijan Officials

Financial Crimes Anti-Corruption Bribery

Financial Crimes

On Friday, August 18, a Russian employee of a Swedish branch of a Canadian producer of aircraft and train equipment, was charged by a Swedish prosecutor with aggravated bribery. The sales executive is alleged to have bribed a public official in Azerbaijan to win a contract valued over $300 million to supply Azerbaijan with a signaling system for its railways. The executive was first detained in March 2017 and has been held in custody since that time. If convicted, he faces six years imprisonment and deportation.

According to a March 2017 report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an investigative reporting network spread across Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America established in 2006 to conduct transnational investigative reporting to expose global organized crime and corruption, the company was suspected of paying “millions of dollars in bribes to unidentified Azerbaijani officials through a shadowy company registered in the United Kingdom,” which the Swedish prosecutor has characterized as having “no employees or business” but which profited substantially in this deal by purchasing equipment from the company and selling the identical equipment to the company's Azerbaijan affiliate for a profit. According to export records reviewed by the OCCRP, the equipment was delivered directly from the company to Azerbaijan. The report identified the UK intermediary, which, according to an earlier OCCRP report is alleged to have ties to the former president of a russian railways company, and is alleged to have had similar involvement in a contract with the company and Russia.