Ericsson CEO Reveals Company May Have Paid ISIS, Other Terrorists for Access to Transport Routes in Iraq

According to admissions made by its CEO, telecommunications giant Ericsson may have made payments to ISIS and other terror organizations in order to access certain transport routes in Iraq. CEO Borje Ekholm admitted that “unusual expenses” included “transport routes have been purchased through areas that have been controlled by terrorist organizations, including ISIS.”

Bloomberg reports that the Stockholm-based telecommunications firm Ericsson recently admitted that it may have made payments to the ISIS terror organization in order to gain access to transport routes in Iraq. The admission comes after the U.S. DOJ accused the company in October of breaching a $1 billion agreement it made with prosecutors in 2019 to end a corruption probe into the firm.

In a recent interview with the newspaper Dagens Industri, Ericsson CEO Borje Ekholm stated that the company identified “unusual expenses dating back to 2018” but has yet to determine who received the money. Ekholm added: “What we are seeing is that transport routes have been purchased through areas that have been controlled by terrorist organizations, including ISIS.”

Ekholm’s comments come after a statement by the company on Tuesday in which it said that it continues to “invest significantly” into an investigation into compliance concerns in its Iraq-based operations.

Ericsson has faced a number of issues in recent years including a long-running corruption probe resulting in a $1 billion settlement agreement in 2019. Last year, a unit of Ericsson AB admitted to a bribery campaign in Asia and the Middle East. In October last year, the U.S. DOJ accused the firm of breaching the settlement agreement by failing to provide certain documents.

Ekholm told the newspaper that the company has spent “considerable resources trying to understand this as best we can. Financing terrorism is completely unacceptable and something we do not allow at all.”

Ericsson shares were down almost 14.5 percent on Wednesday following the news, the largest drop in a day since July 2017. Shares fell almost four percent in morning trading on Thursday.

Read more at Bloomberg here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com