As if bombings, shootings, and underage contract killers weren’t bad enough, Sweden is now also facing a new type of more complex economic crime, a new report states. At the heart of this growing underground economy is large-scale money laundering, constituting a threat to the integrity of the country’s financial and welfare systems.
A few years ago, criminal gains in individual cases investigated by the Swedish Economic Crime Agency could amount to tens of millions of kronor; today, those figures can exceed 100 million kronor for a single case. In total, the agency estimates the illegal economy generates between SEK100–150 billion (€9.2–13.8 bn) every year, Director General Rikard Jermsten says in the report.
The new types of economic crime schemes seen by the agency involve complex corporate structures, often fronted by so-called figureheads and built around stolen or fake identities. Masterminding these operations are members of organized crime groups with strategic, long-term plans, some of whom operate at the highest levels of the criminal underworld. Rather than loosely held-together gangs, these networks more resemble corporate groups, often with international links, involving parent companies and several subsidiaries used to launder money, allowing the criminals to do so on an industrial scale.
While financial crime and organized crime used to be viewed as two separate worlds, there’s now a clear overlap, the report explains. “The result is large-scale, society-threatening crime, where organized serious criminals profit from lucrative economic crime, while actors involved in financial crime gain access to violent resources.”
“We see that the same individuals are at the top of both economic crime and organized violent crime. We need to target these top figures, but it will take time, and it will get worse before it gets better,” Jermsten told TV4.
Certain sectors are particularly vulnerable to financial crime, including the welfare system, banking and credit institutions, the premium pension system, and major construction and infrastructure projects.
In the past, criminals would exploit welfare benefits for personal gain, but today, they’re involved in much broader ways. Some even own and run homes for vulnerable children and adults, health centers, pharmacies, and dental clinics, taking advantage of the system by charging public social and health services for care that was never actually provided.
In 2023, the Economic Crimes Agency sounded the alarm about criminal gangs making a foray into state-supported businesses like healthcare clinics, vaccination centers, family home operations, and operations aimed at caring for unaccompanied migrant minors. And already back then, criminal gangs were estimated to make twice as much from that type of financial crime as from narcotics sales.
“When economic crime affects our shared welfare and challenges the trust-based structures we have in Sweden, it also poses risks to our democracy,” the Economic Crime Agency report warns.
The countermeasures and responses to criminal activity have not kept pace with the development of this new type of economic crime, the report points out: “The current sentencing guidelines for economic crimes are no longer suited to today’s realities and fail to reflect the severity of serious financial offenses. The penalties often seem disproportionate compared to those for other crimes.”
The agency says there’s therefore a need to raise sentencing ranges to ‘let the punishment fit the crime.’ This could also include classifying serious economic crimes as “particularly severe” offenses, which would allow for the use of other measures, such as electronic surveillance and wiretapping, in the investigation of suspected criminal activity.
