Ericsson report details how it paid off Islamic State |
Tuesday, 01 March 2022 06:39 |
HTTP/2 200 date: Tue, 01 Mar 2022 13:00:20 GMT content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 link: ; rel=preload; as=script;,/c499793e17a0af6aaa097c70c71de5961227d0b0/javascript/_.js>; rel=preload; as=script;,/default/0fc8f4c18c4aad2f893a663508fd0a15221177c6/scaffolding.css>; rel=preload; as=style;,/default/0fc8f4c18c4aad2f893a663508fd0a15221177c6/design.css>; rel=preload; as=style;,/5e49edbd1875f214e0decae1e24b200066780fa8/style/fonts/arimo/arimo-700.latin.woff2>; rel=preload; as=font; crossorigin;,/5e49edbd1875f214e0decae1e24b200066780fa8/style/fonts/arimo/arimo-400.latin.woff2>; rel=preload; as=font; crossorigin; cache-control: max-age=0 expires: Tue, 01 Mar 2022 13:00:19 GMT vary: Accept-Encoding x-reg-bofh: pfy03us x-clacks-overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett, Lester Haines x-content-type-options: nosniff cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC expect-ct: max-age=604800, report-uri="https://report-uri.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/beacon/expect-ct" server: cloudflare cf-ray: 6e52132daede5ac0-MEL alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=86400, h3-29=":443"; ma=86400 Internal Ericsson report reveals how it paid Islamic State • The Register Staff sacked after bosses discovered terrorists received money for access to Iraq mobile marketA 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 leaked report, which reviews the years 2011 to 2019, included names and precise details of how money from the company found its way to terrorists. Rather than halting operations in Iraq as Islamic State ravaged the country, some personnel within Ericsson instead bribed "politically connected fixers and unvetted subcontractors", the ICIJ said, while the Swedish biz continued building potentially lucrative mobile networks. Convoys of lorries would pass through terrorist-controlled areas of Iraq after bribes were paid. Ericsson admitted it may have funded terrorism, with its own internal review stating: "By avoiding official customs by transporting through areas controlled by militias, including ISIS, it cannot be excluded that Cargo Iraq engaged in facilitation payments (to official Customs officers), bribery and potential illicit financing of terrorism to carry out transportation operations for Ericsson". Cargo Iraq was a local transport contractor whose owner denied to the ICIJ that his company was paying off ISIS. The internal probe revealed weak corporate governance, meaning that millions of dollars in payments could not be accounted for. Ericsson referred The Register to a statement made a fortnight ago when asked for comment about the latest revelations. That statement said: "Unusual expense claims in Iraq, dating back to 2018, triggered a review that uncovered compliance concerns about breaches of the company's Code of Business Ethics. Investigations of these concerns led to a subsequent and detailed internal investigation that was undertaken by Ericsson in 2019, supported by external legal counsel." It admitted to "corruption-related misconduct", as well as "the use of alternate transport routes in connection with circumventing Iraqi Customs, at a time when terrorist organizations, including ISIS, controlled some transport routes." Ericsson investigators were unable to tell where some payments ultimately ended up, it said. Several staffers "were exited from the company" as a result, it concluded. The ICIJ report adds meat to the bones of reports which first surfaced in mid-February that Ericsson had previously been paying terrorists for access to a new market. Did US turn a blind eye?A counter-corruption probe by the US foreign ministry in 2013 put senior Ericsson management on notice and resulted in a $1bn bribery settlement in 2019. Yet as rhetoric against Huawei ramped up in recent years, officials talked up Ericsson in favour of Chinese rival Huawei, seemingly omitting any reference to the Iraq misdeeds. Ericsson, along with Nokia, is one of two Western firms with the R&D expertise to challenge Huawei dominance of the 5G mobile network infrastructure market. With efforts such as OpenRAN taking time to bear commercial fruit, US interests lie in encouraging and promoting the work of non-Chinese companies making 5G base stations and other network equipment. The Swedish business has done well from Britain's Huawei ban, scooping contracts with O2 Telefónica and BT-EE. Similarly, in the Netherlands Ericsson is also set to displace Huawei in the core of at least one MNO's 5G network. ® Other stories you might likeCisco has disclosed further details for a dedicated 5G network-as-a-service that customers will pay for based on what they consume – a week after Hewlett Packard Enterprise released its own package. Announced at Mobile World Congress, Cisco said its Private 5G for enterprises will be delivered via a global collection of service providers and system integrators. Cisco will still own the kit and those third parties will manage it on-site for customers, the sales pitch being that it reduces technical, financial, and operational risks for enterprises. Private 5G offers organisations their own, dedicated 5G network that can provide the advantage of connectivity over a much wider area than a typical enterprise Wi-Fi deployment. It can also be useful for a range of use cases from factory floor to supply chains, university and enterprise campuses, and hospitals. Hull City Council has launched procurement for a £6m SaaS-based ERP system after deciding to ditch an Oracle E-Business Suite it has relied on for 20 years. The council has issued a tender for a cloud-based pay-as-you-go ERP system after extending support for Oracle R12 using a third party. Although the deal, signed in 2016, saved the council around £300,000 a year, it meant that significant Oracle upgrades ended. In a tender document, the council said it was seeking to replace its ERP system which links with other 40 internal and external systems including software for benefits payments, foster carer payments, and housing rent. Column The pandemic changed the way I used computers. For most of the 20 years before 2020, I rarely needed or used more than the browser, the mail app, messaging, and a word processor. Other than that I made the occasional foray into image and/or video editing or PDF preparation tools. Then COVID movement restrictions made it nearly impossible to continue my work as a public speaker. Events disappeared from my calendar as everyone went home – for two years. But it wasn't long before clients came calling again, asking for something that could be delivered remotely. By this point people had already begun to suffer Zoom fatigue – the result of endless hours squirming beneath the surveillance of a webcam. I reckoned that more of the same would only leave people wanting less of me – a circumstance any public speaker tries to avoid. Microsoft has updated its Azure for Operators portfolio aimed at telecoms providers, with Azure Operator Distributed Services enabling those customers to run workloads on a single carrier-grade hybrid platform. Redmond unveiled Azure for Operators in September 2020 with the intent to add capabilities to its cloud infrastructure to support carrier-grade network operations such as low-latency connectivity and network slicing in a bid to draw telcos to Azure. This was given a boost last year when AT&T decided to migrate its 5G mobile network to Azure, and Microsoft gained AT&T's carrier-grade Network Cloud platform as part of the deal. The joint ESA-Roscosmos Mars rover Rosalind Franklin is "very unlikely" to launch this year after Russia was hit with fresh economic sanctions for invading Ukraine. Following a meeting with its 22 member states, the European Space Agency confirmed on Monday it was "fully implementing sanctions imposed on Russia." "We deplore the human casualties and tragic consequences of the war in Ukraine. We are giving absolute priority to taking proper decisions, not only for the sake of our workforce involved in the programmes, but in full respect of our European values, which have always fundamentally shaped our approach to international cooperation," ESA said. "Regarding the ExoMars programme continuation, the sanctions and the wider context make a launch in 2022 very unlikely." Toshiba has made a raft of new executive appointments as its reform plan meets with renewed opposition. The beleaguered Japanese giant today announced [PDF] the departure of CEO Satoshi Tsunakawa, and the appointment of current corporate senior vice president Taro Shimada as his replacement. No explanation was offered for Tsunakawa’s departure, but it’s not hard to guess the reasons: on his watch Toshiba devised a plan to split the company into three entities to realise more value for shareholders and help to put a string of scandals in the past.
HTTP/2 200 date: Tue, 01 Mar 2022 13:00:20 GMT content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 link: ; rel=preload; as=script;,/c499793e17a0af6aaa097c70c71de5961227d0b0/javascript/_.js>; rel=preload; as=script;,/default/0fc8f4c18c4aad2f893a663508fd0a15221177c6/scaffolding.css>; rel=preload; as=style;,/default/0fc8f4c18c4aad2f893a663508fd0a15221177c6/design.css>; rel=preload; as=style;,/5e49edbd1875f214e0decae1e24b200066780fa8/style/fonts/arimo/arimo-700.latin.woff2>; rel=preload; as=font; crossorigin;,/5e49edbd1875f214e0decae1e24b200066780fa8/style/fonts/arimo/arimo-400.latin.woff2>; rel=preload; as=font; crossorigin; cache-control: max-age=0 expires: Tue, 01 Mar 2022 13:00:19 GMT vary: Accept-Encoding x-reg-bofh: pfy03us x-clacks-overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett, Lester Haines x-content-type-options: nosniff cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC expect-ct: max-age=604800, report-uri="https://report-uri.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/beacon/expect-ct" server: cloudflare cf-ray: 6e52132daede5ac0-MEL alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=86400, h3-29=":443"; ma=86400 Internal Ericsson report reveals how it paid Islamic State • The Register Staff sacked after bosses discovered terrorists received money for access to Iraq mobile marketA 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 leaked report, which reviews the years 2011 to 2019, included names and precise details of how money from the company found its way to terrorists. Rather than halting operations in Iraq as Islamic State ravaged the country, some personnel within Ericsson instead bribed "politically connected fixers and unvetted subcontractors", the ICIJ said, while the Swedish biz continued building potentially lucrative mobile networks. Convoys of lorries would pass through terrorist-controlled areas of Iraq after bribes were paid. Ericsson admitted it may have funded terrorism, with its own internal review stating: "By avoiding official customs by transporting through areas controlled by militias, including ISIS, it cannot be excluded that Cargo Iraq engaged in facilitation payments (to official Customs officers), bribery and potential illicit financing of terrorism to carry out transportation operations for Ericsson". Cargo Iraq was a local transport contractor whose owner denied to the ICIJ that his company was paying off ISIS. The internal probe revealed weak corporate governance, meaning that millions of dollars in payments could not be accounted for. Ericsson referred The Register to a statement made a fortnight ago when asked for comment about the latest revelations. That statement said: "Unusual expense claims in Iraq, dating back to 2018, triggered a review that uncovered compliance concerns about breaches of the company's Code of Business Ethics. Investigations of these concerns led to a subsequent and detailed internal investigation that was undertaken by Ericsson in 2019, supported by external legal counsel." It admitted to "corruption-related misconduct", as well as "the use of alternate transport routes in connection with circumventing Iraqi Customs, at a time when terrorist organizations, including ISIS, controlled some transport routes." Ericsson investigators were unable to tell where some payments ultimately ended up, it said. Several staffers "were exited from the company" as a result, it concluded. The ICIJ report adds meat to the bones of reports which first surfaced in mid-February that Ericsson had previously been paying terrorists for access to a new market. Did US turn a blind eye?A counter-corruption probe by the US foreign ministry in 2013 put senior Ericsson management on notice and resulted in a $1bn bribery settlement in 2019. Yet as rhetoric against Huawei ramped up in recent years, officials talked up Ericsson in favour of Chinese rival Huawei, seemingly omitting any reference to the Iraq misdeeds. Ericsson, along with Nokia, is one of two Western firms with the R&D expertise to challenge Huawei dominance of the 5G mobile network infrastructure market. With efforts such as OpenRAN taking time to bear commercial fruit, US interests lie in encouraging and promoting the work of non-Chinese companies making 5G base stations and other network equipment. The Swedish business has done well from Britain's Huawei ban, scooping contracts with O2 Telefónica and BT-EE. Similarly, in the Netherlands Ericsson is also set to displace Huawei in the core of at least one MNO's 5G network. ® Other stories you might likeCisco has disclosed further details for a dedicated 5G network-as-a-service that customers will pay for based on what they consume – a week after Hewlett Packard Enterprise released its own package. Announced at Mobile World Congress, Cisco said its Private 5G for enterprises will be delivered via a global collection of service providers and system integrators. Cisco will still own the kit and those third parties will manage it on-site for customers, the sales pitch being that it reduces technical, financial, and operational risks for enterprises. Private 5G offers organisations their own, dedicated 5G network that can provide the advantage of connectivity over a much wider area than a typical enterprise Wi-Fi deployment. It can also be useful for a range of use cases from factory floor to supply chains, university and enterprise campuses, and hospitals. Hull City Council has launched procurement for a £6m SaaS-based ERP system after deciding to ditch an Oracle E-Business Suite it has relied on for 20 years. The council has issued a tender for a cloud-based pay-as-you-go ERP system after extending support for Oracle R12 using a third party. Although the deal, signed in 2016, saved the council around £300,000 a year, it meant that significant Oracle upgrades ended. In a tender document, the council said it was seeking to replace its ERP system which links with other 40 internal and external systems including software for benefits payments, foster carer payments, and housing rent. Column The pandemic changed the way I used computers. For most of the 20 years before 2020, I rarely needed or used more than the browser, the mail app, messaging, and a word processor. Other than that I made the occasional foray into image and/or video editing or PDF preparation tools. Then COVID movement restrictions made it nearly impossible to continue my work as a public speaker. Events disappeared from my calendar as everyone went home – for two years. But it wasn't long before clients came calling again, asking for something that could be delivered remotely. By this point people had already begun to suffer Zoom fatigue – the result of endless hours squirming beneath the surveillance of a webcam. I reckoned that more of the same would only leave people wanting less of me – a circumstance any public speaker tries to avoid. Microsoft has updated its Azure for Operators portfolio aimed at telecoms providers, with Azure Operator Distributed Services enabling those customers to run workloads on a single carrier-grade hybrid platform. Redmond unveiled Azure for Operators in September 2020 with the intent to add capabilities to its cloud infrastructure to support carrier-grade network operations such as low-latency connectivity and network slicing in a bid to draw telcos to Azure. This was given a boost last year when AT&T decided to migrate its 5G mobile network to Azure, and Microsoft gained AT&T's carrier-grade Network Cloud platform as part of the deal. The joint ESA-Roscosmos Mars rover Rosalind Franklin is "very unlikely" to launch this year after Russia was hit with fresh economic sanctions for invading Ukraine. Following a meeting with its 22 member states, the European Space Agency confirmed on Monday it was "fully implementing sanctions imposed on Russia." "We deplore the human casualties and tragic consequences of the war in Ukraine. We are giving absolute priority to taking proper decisions, not only for the sake of our workforce involved in the programmes, but in full respect of our European values, which have always fundamentally shaped our approach to international cooperation," ESA said. "Regarding the ExoMars programme continuation, the sanctions and the wider context make a launch in 2022 very unlikely." Toshiba has made a raft of new executive appointments as its reform plan meets with renewed opposition. The beleaguered Japanese giant today announced [PDF] the departure of CEO Satoshi Tsunakawa, and the appointment of current corporate senior vice president Taro Shimada as his replacement. No explanation was offered for Tsunakawa’s departure, but it’s not hard to guess the reasons: on his watch Toshiba devised a plan to split the company into three entities to realise more value for shareholders and help to put a string of scandals in the past.
Source: https://bit.ly/3syvr8Y |