Global Policy Forum

Nordic businessmen were once considered to have impeccable ethics, but recent financial scandals, including at Swedish insurer Skandia, tell a story of greed and corruption, tarnishing the whiter-than-snow image of corporate Scandinavia. According to the latest ranking by Transparency International, a non-governmental organisation that specialises in the war on corruption, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway are among the eight least corrupt countries in the world. Yet, over recent weeks, corruption scandals of gigantic proportions have shaken the region. An internal investigation into Skandia revealing fraud, creative accounting and exorbitant bonuses to top executives, sent shockwaves through the Swedish financial establishment this week. Skandia chairman Bengt Braun resigned with immediate effect hours before the results of the investigation were released, accepting his share of the blame for allowing the shenanigans to occur while he was the vice-chairman. The report charges three former top executives of immoral and criminal behaviour for having ensured astronomical bonuses for themselves and colleagues, and renovating their luxury apartments provided by Skandia to the tune of 8 million kronor (R6.3 million) of the company's money. Skandia is expected to demand 630 million kronor in compensation from two of the executives, and all three men risk a prison sentence of up to six years.

"Compared with many other countries, corruption is basically non-existent," said Christer Van der Kwast, Stockholm's public prosecutor. "But it is still too important a problem to ignore it." Also tarnishing Sweden's squeaky clean image lately have been revelations that at least 90 employees at Systembolaget, the country's state-held monopoly for alcohol distribution, have taken bribes from suppliers in exchange for giving their products prime shelf space. Making the scandal even more titillating is the fact that the company's chief executive, Anita Steen, is Swedish prime minister Goeran Persson's live-in lover. Representatives for Swedish business balk at the mention of a general corruption culture, but admit that there are individual, isolated cases of embezzlement. "Some people simply take advantage of their position," said Walter Skoeldefors, the vice-president of retail employer Svensk Handel. "This is especially linked to the financial bubble, which created a climate in which everyone tried to land the biggest bonus." That climate appears to have spread to other Nordic countries as well.

In Norway, for instance, leading executives at Statoil were forced to step down at the end of September, amid suspicion that the national oil company had bribed Iranian officials in an attempt to gain a better foothold in the country. "There is no corruption culture here. No one would even think of trying to bribe someone to get a driving licence," Eva Joly, an investigating magistrate in France and now a Norwegian government adviser on corruption, said recently. "We've never been in the business of filling suitcases with cash, but I have never thought that the problem stops at the border," she added. "We are all integrated in a global economic system, with the same risks and the same needs for controlling mechanisms." In addition to their ever-present discipline, the Nordic countries are characterised by transparency. In Norway, salaries of every citizen, from the prime minister to university students, are available on the internet. "This is a completely transparent society, to a degree that the French can't even imagine," said Joly, who does not hesitate to reveal her annual salary of E122 400 (R927 792). And Norway is not the only Nordic country where transparency and a low tolerance threshold for baksheesh, or small payments to expedite service, is the rule. In Sweden, for instance, any gift worth more than 200 kronor is considered a bribe. Finland, for its part, received Transparency International's top ranking - quite an achievement for a country that shares 1 300km of its b order with Russia, which only made it to 86th place on the list. The country's tax authorities have access to all banking information and, as in Norway, salaries are all aired in the public domain. Living beyond one's means seldom goes unnoticed. Finns need long memories to remember the only serious corruption allegations in their history, which were linked to the construction of the Helsinki subway three decades ago.

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