“Witness: Ericsson funded al-Qaeda,” Nordic Times, April 18, 2023:
According to a retired US colonel, Swedish telecom giant Ericsson provided high-tech equipment to the al-Qaeda terrorist group in exchange for protection in the region.
According to the Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri, the exchange between Ericsson and the terrorist organization took place between 2008 and 2017. Ericsson allegedly preferred to give al-Qaeda the technology equipment rather than cash in order to continue its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan undisturbed.
The former colonel is one of several insider witnesses involved in a lawsuit against Ericsson filed by lawyers representing relatives of the terror group’s victims.
These include trucks, signal communication equipment, telephones, computers and satellite nodes placed in special “stashes” where al-Qaeda members then retrieved them. Ericsson would not comment on the information, but told Dagens Industri that it “will continue to defend itself against this action”….
February 2022: Financial Times writes
Ericsson says it may have paid Isis terror group in Iraq
Shares in telecoms group drop after internal probe finds payments were made for transport routes
Shares in Ericsson fell sharply after Borje Ekholm, chief executive of the Swedish telecoms equipment maker, conceded it could have made payments to terror organisation Isis in Iraq. Ericsson said late on Tuesday that an internal investigation from 2019 had found serious breaches of compliance rules in Iraq including payments for transport routes to evade local customs. “What we are seeing is that transport routes have been purchased through areas that have been controlled by terrorist organisations, including Isis,” Ekholm told Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri on Wednesday. Shares in Ericsson closed down 14 per cent on Wednesday. Ericsson paid more than $1bn in December 2019 to settle US criminal and civil investigations into foreign corruption in countries spanning China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Djibouti and Kuwait.
December 2016
Istifanus Bello Gurama, a senior strategist with Dangote Industries Limited, who was reportedly kidnapped three weeks ago, has been murdered.
Reliable sources say Gurama’s body was found in the gutter, adding that one of the kidnappers must have alerted a member of the public to where the body was.
Gurama was believed to have been kidnapped three weeks ago but news of his murder got to his family members today (Monday).
Sources close to him told our correspondent that as a senior strategist, Gurama was in charge of negotiations and handing ransom payment to kidnappers whenever any of the expatriates in Dangote Industries was kidnapped.
Punch reports that on the day Gurama was allegedly kidnapped, he was said to have gone, as usual, to negotiate and pay ransom money for the release of one of the expatriates. However, on getting there, the kidnappers reportedly said he was the one they were after and he was subsequently detained.
A close friend who refused to be named said Gurama showed him some of the videos of his negotiations with kidnappers.
During a visit to her on Monday, Gurama‘s wife of 20 years, Amina, was inconsolable.
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