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On December 11-12, InsightEvents is organizing an anti-corruption conference in Stockholm. Lantero is participating with a session on whistleblowing and how to establish effective reporting channels and processes. The conference takes a practical perspective on how organizations should think and act. Speakers from academia, government, and the private sector will discuss various aspects of corruption, ranging from general legal awareness, contexts where risks arise, whistleblowing, and current societal issues, to experiences in regulation, new considerations related to AI, and international perspectives on the matter. The conference will be moderated by the well-known anti-corruption figure Louise Brown, and among the speakers is Ulrik Åshuvud from Transparency International Sweden. For more information about the conference, click here.

As the whistleblower legislation applies to ever more companies, following the Whistleblower Directive from the EU, Lantero is running a campaign with a unique Black Week offer. – The offer is both a way to test the effectiveness of individual channels where we run marketing campaigns and a push to advance orders from some of the many companies that are about to miss the deadline. At the moment this is true for many Swedish companies, says Joakim Wirén, Digital Manager at Lantero. The offer is valid throughout the week, as long as the order is submitted in time through the order form on the web.

The Lantero system supports user logins in several ways. Username and password, BankID, SSO and two factor authentication. In this post we would like to urge our users to start using two factor authentication. When a user wants to log in using two factor authentication, he or she first need to enter their username and password. Lantero will then send out a one-time code to the users e-mail account. The user will then enter the code and will be logged in. If e-mail does not work for some reason, the code can also be sent using SMS. The main reason for using this form of authentication is that it is much more secure than using ordinary passwords. If you as a Lantero customer want to switch login method, get in touch with us at Lantero and we will help you out!

The Örebro District Court in Sweden has sentenced a technician at a vehicle inspection for bribery. The man is said to have accepted bribes to approve cars. The case follows a pattern where bribery offenses often occur at the intersection of the private and public sectors, where vehicle inspections can be seen as a delegated exercise of authority. Lantero receives recurring questions about what falls within the scope of the Whistleblower Act, and in such a case, it is entirely possible to interpret it as a whistleblowing case. Publicly sanctioned activities that oversee or regulate traffic safety are considered to be in the public interest, and bribery offenses that risk undermining traffic safety or the legitimacy of regulatory bodies must be considered serious. In the current case, however, it is unclear whether it has come to attention through a whistleblower report.

The EU has observed increasing activity of malicious influence from foreign interests. A report has now been adopted to counter influences that threaten the integrity of European institutions, to protect the Union's openness and other fundamental values. The initiative seeks to deal with problems around conflicts of interest, the influence of the democratic processes and create better follow-up and accountability regarding violations. The pattern is recognized that corruption occurs where financial resources and power are managed or controlled by politically appointed individuals. The risks are naturally present in all types of organizations, but follow-up and control often seem to be lacking in public operations. Furthermore, a recurring pattern is that measures tend to be about follow-up and control rather than taking the more laborious route of removing the incentive structures that invite the problems. More about the initiative can be read here.

Lantero holds a seminar on setting up and working with a whistleblowing system. The seminar is primarily aimed at companies and organizations between 50 and 250 employees, who under Swedish legislation will be subject to new whistleblowing requirements from the end of 2023.  The seminar is led by Andreas Wahlström. We discuss concrete issues and start from both legislation / practice and practical experiences from more than eight years in the industry.  Date: June 14 Time 3.30-4.15 PM CET Registration is done here. 

In May, the American SEC paid out 279m USD to a tipster who alerted the authorities of bribes within Ericsson. The payout is linked to the rule that says a whistleblower can receive 10-30 percent of the fine imposed on a company, in this case Ericsson's $1.06 billion fine, linked to a corruption scandal. Article on the subject here.

The Whistleblower Directive establishes structures for internal handling of misconduct through processes for reporting and handling cases. Depending on how you look at it, it could be a move towards bypassing the union, with its traditional role. Or a step towards making common cause with the union and mobilizing more internal resources to curb work-related problems. In the newspaper Transportarbetaren (Swedish), the lawyer Jessica Berlin is interviewed about her view of the law, how it works and what significance it may have.

The requirements for whistleblower solutions in the public sector in Sweden have existed since the summer of 2022. Now the media have started to follow up on how the new channels are being used. When newspapers request information on the whistleblowing services, under the public transparency legislation, the authorities will have to adhere to the confidentiality protection they must maintain vis-à-vis both whistleblowers and suspected wrongdoers. Depending on how the individual authority interprets the confidentiality requirement, one can be variously restrictive with the information. From time to time, the media gets some insight into the type of cases that come in and are dealt with in the whistleblower channels. An example is an article in Läkartidningen (major Swedish publication for physicians), which reviews the cases that have come to the health service authorities since the law came into force. As in other types of operations, the channels are often used for cases that should not be considered whistleblowing cases, but which could still be valuable to catch. Common demarcation problems are when work-related conflicts become so serious or systematic that, based on the fact that it concerns public activity, it can be argued that the matter is of public interest.

Lantero works to ensure that the requirements under the Whistleblower Act are not only easy to live up to, but that the work also strengthens the organization and its culture. As a natural extension of our goals, we have now established a collaboration with PocketLaw, which packages other legal services digitally to make available effective tools for contract management, signing and information sharing, as well as templates for various types of legal documentation. The partnership means that Lantero's clients will receive a 15% discount on all PocketLaw's packages for the first 12 months. Read more and register here.