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BANK

Nordea swindlers get 10 years in jail

Oslo district court has sentenced four men and one woman to between four and ten years of prison for their part in swindling nearly 90 million kroner ($16 million) out of Nordea bank and into accounts in Dubai.

Published: 14 September 2011 15:17 CEST

The court ruled three of the men must pay back 62 million kroner for having transferred sums in the tens of millions in several illegal transfers.

The woman whose account was targeted is Randi Nilsen, the 65-year-old widow of Norwegian real estate developer Walter Nilsen. He built his firm Block Watne into one of Norway’s first post-oil-boom business successes in the 1990s.

One of the accused worked for the bank and gave power of attorney to another of the five who proceeded to move over 89 million into accounts in the United Arab Emirates.

The bank succeeded in reclaiming just 27 million of the stolen funds, and the remainder formed the basis of the court’s repayment order.

Randi Nilsen is one of Norway’s wealthiest women with a fortune estimated to be 400 million kroner. Her son told newspaper Dagens Næringsliv that the attack on his mother’s account was coincidental but otherwise would not comment on the case.

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SECURITY

Swedish Huawei ban is legal, court rules

A Swedish ban on Chinese telecoms company Huawei was confirmed in court on Tuesday, citing the country's security as a just reason for banning its equipment in a 5G rollout.

Published: 23 June 2021 07:14 CEST
Swedish Huawei ban is legal, court rules
Photo: AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

The administrative court in Stockholm ruled that the decision of the Swedish telecoms authority, PTS, to ban the use of equipment from Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE in a new Swedish 5G telecom network last October — a move that irked Beijing — was legal.

Equipment already installed must also be removed by January 1st, 2025.

“Sweden’s security is an important reason and the administrative court has considered that it’s only the security police and the military that together have a full picture when it comes to the security situation and threats against Sweden,” judge Ulrika Melin said in a statement.

Huawei denounced the ruling, but did not say whether it would appeal.

“We are of course noting that there has been no evidence of any wrongdoings by Huawei which is being used as basis for this verdict, it is purely based on assumption,” Kenneth Fredriksen, the company’s vice-president for Central, Eastern Europe and the Nordic region, told AFP.

Huawei will now evaluate the decision and the “see what kind of actions we will take to protect our rights,” Fredriksen added.

After the UK in the summer of 2020, Sweden became the second country in Europe and the first in the EU to explicitly ban Huawei from almost all of the network infrastructure needed to run its 5G network.

Beijing had warned that PTS’ decision could have “consequences” for the Scandinavian country’s companies in China, prompting Swedish telecom giant and Huawei competitor Ericsson to worry about retaliation.

“We will continue to be available to have constructive dialogues with Swedish authorities to see if we can find pragmatic ways of taking care of security and at the same time keeping an open and fair market like Sweden has always been,” Fredriksen said.

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