Sweden's government is facing accusations from Riksrevisionen, the country's national audit office, that it has mishandled the planned sale of a controlling stake in TeliaSonera, the Financial Times reports.
The office is set to issue a report that is expected to criticize the government for an alleged lack of expert consultation ahead of the planned sale of its 37 percent stake, the newspaper added.
The Nordic operator is currently the subject of a hostile takeover bid by France Telecom.
Swedish-Finnish telecom operator TeliaSonera has been accused of “rotten” business dealings in Azerbaijan, following a separate bribery scandal in Uzbekistan.
Folksam, which is one of the largest insurance companies in Sweden, has accused the firm of “systematic cheating”, after it emerged that TeliaSonera’s subsidiary in Azerbaijan had ties with the family of Ilham Aliyev, the Arab nation’s leader.
It has been claimed that the dictator’s daughters were shareholders of TeliaSonera's subsidiary Azertel, via a connected company based in Panama.
“It is distressing that in a large Swedish company…people thought that cheating would pay off in the long run,” Carina Lundberg Markow, one of Folksam’s managers told the TT news agency on Wednesday.
She criticized TeliaSonera for failing to act “in an honest and open way” when entering new markets.
“Instead, they choose to pay for success,” she added.
TeliaSonera is one of the biggest telecom operators in the Nordic and Baltic countries and also operates in several emerging markets in Eurasia including Russia and Turkey, as well as Spain. The Swedish state owns 37.3 percent of the company.
Swedish prosecutor Gunnar Stetler is already investigating claims of unethical business practices in Uzbekistan and told TT he had also been given new information concerning potential bribery in Azerbaijan.
The company has voluntarily cooperated with the investigation, handing over what Stetler describes as “extensive information” about “the terms and conditions in Eurasian countries”.
Stetler said he was unable to discuss how he had responded to the information. But calls are growing for TeliaSonera to release a public report about its business dealings.
“Now it is extremely important to create transparency,” said Lundberg Markow.
“This shows the importance of having a set of values when doing business in complex markets or countries,” she added.
TeliaSonera and Norwegian rival Telenor recently merged their operations in Denmark, while the telecoms giant last year purchased rival Tele2's Norwegian division for 5.1 kronor.
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