back to article Ericsson report details how it paid off Islamic State

A leaked internal report details how Ericsson paid hundreds of millions of pounds to Islamic State terrorists in Iraq, substantiating earlier reports that the company was paying intermediaries to buy off ISIS on its behalf. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) revealed over the weekend that the …

  1. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
    WTF?

    "the US foreign ministry" ?

    What the hell is that? The US has nothing called the Foreign Ministry. Did you mean the State Department?

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: "the US foreign ministry" ?

      Apropos of nothing other than your use name, The Man Who Fell To Earth, 10 part TV series, starts broadcasting in the US on Apr 24th. In case you didn't already know, I'm guessing you'll be interested :-)

    2. Insert sadsack pun here

      Re: "the US foreign ministry" ?

      If you're gonna be a pedant about it..."foreign ministry" isn't capitalised. El Reg knows it is not the proper name. The State Department is the foreign ministry of the US.

  2. Claverhouse
    Meh

    Tough Moralism

    For all that corruption is wholly unknown in places such as Washington, American State governments, and Westminster --- and if proposed severely punished --- they really should understand it is a necessary payment in some parts of the world; and if deplored, not something to get excited about.

    Plus some small corruption ( not that this was small --- but an exceptional situation ) is preferable to tightening up too strongly, as with an engine.

    .

    It's horrible ISIS benefited but I can't blame Ericsson for doing what it had to do.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: Tough Moralism

      Whataboutism? Really? C'mon.

    2. Gordon 10
      WTF?

      Re: Tough Moralism

      Ericsson didn't have to do anything. There is no universal rule saying a region has to have a mobile network so badly its worth bribing actual terrorists to get things done. After all the infrastructure would have benefited them anyway so strategically they probably could have negotiated a deployment without a hefty bribe.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Can we expect the same punishment for ex-Ericcson execs, that I would get if I'd paypalled $100 to Isis?

  4. TWB

    Ironic

    My previous employer got bought by Ericsson and all us TUPE'd staff had to then start doing their online staff courses - many of which were all about anti-corruption, whistle blowing and being generally good-moral-ethical employees.

    It seemed really odd as I had no business dealings in my role, never negotiated deals with clients, never got offered any freebies etc etc.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Ironic

      It's a box ticking exercise in most companies these days, like many of the other course we all do, like "lone working" and "working at height" where 99% of the course is irrelevant to 99% of the participants. I do have day to day contact with customers, but I'm in no position to do anything where a construed bribe or gift would have any effect on my or the client.

      Luckily, most of these courses are online video courses and you can just drag the video scroll bar across to the end of the video, glance at the summary slide and get a pass mark, using your common sense, experience and maybe remembering a few bullet points, at the end of course quiz, all in 5-10 minutes for a "1 hour" course. My boss was ragging on me a few months ago for not being up to date on my "required" courses so I set aside some time over Christmas and did about 10 of them in about an hour. Easy if you've already done them before, most are "required" to be renewed every 12 or 24 months and they tend not to change.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Ironic

        The "playback speed" setting helps as well.

        Unfortunately for me, some of our internal training is delivered in web based formats that don't allow skipping ahead or faster playback speeds. Our IT training is the worst offender.

        1. rcxb1

          Re: Ironic

          > our internal training is delivered in web based formats that don't allow skipping ahead or faster playback speeds

          Not explicitly allowed, of course. But what just might do it is hitting F12, clicking Console, and typing something like:

          document.querySelector('video').playbackRate = 4.0;

        2. Medixstiff

          Re: Ironic

          We have to do bullying, cyber security, anti money laundering and other training every 6 months at work (home loan lender)

          Scrolling down the list, right clicking and opening each section in a new tab, going about our work and then answering the questions save so much time.

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