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In December 11-12, InsightEvents is organizing an anti-corruption conference in Stockholm. Lantero is participating with a session on whistleblowing and how to set up 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. This includes general legal awareness, contexts where risks arise, whistleblowing, current societal issues, experiences with 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. Insight Events describes the event as follows: "What are bribes and corruption according to the Swedish people, and where is the gray area between what is criminal and just friendly assistance? Bribes and corruption are costly – both in terms of financial damage and damage to trust. It reduces the organization's efficiency, and proactive efforts to detect and identify risk areas are crucial. Fundamental to all organizations is a sound business ethics and morality. It must then be translated into guidelines and procedures to act in a timely and appropriate manner if the worst happens. It is, of course, better to have procedures and create conditions to prevent scandals. However, this is an ongoing effort that must always be on the agenda. Over the two days, companies and organizations, as well as researchers and experts, will share their work and knowledge on anti-corruption."

In anticipation of the whistleblower law requirements for whistleblower systems to apply to all companies with at least 50 employees, Lantero is running a campaign with a unique Black Week offer. "The offer is not only a way to test the effectiveness of individual channels where we run marketing campaigns but also a push to expedite orders from some of the many companies that are last-minute in their approach," says Joakim Wirén, Digital Manager at Lantero. The offer is valid throughout the week, as long as the order is placed in time via the online order form. "Running a campaign during Black Week may seem a bit unusual for a service targeting the corporate sector rather than consumers," Joakim Wirén continues. "But even though anonymity is a core value for us, we have an open approach to working methods and are willing to try new ways of working, including in marketing." The average discount during Black Week is around 20 percent, but Lantero chooses to go further and discount the first-year subscription for a whistleblower system by 50 percent. This is partly because the new rules will soon come into effect, making it a strong call-to-action. It is also because, based on experience, they know that their customers tend to be satisfied and are likely to stay once they have started working with them.

The Lantero system supports multiple login methods, including username and password, BankID, SSO (Single Sign-On), and two-step authentication. In this post, we want to emphasize two-step authentication or BankID, which we encourage users, particularly handlers, to use. With two-step authentication, users first enter their username and password. Lantero then sends a one-time code to the user's email, and the user enters this code to complete the login. If email is not available at the time of login, a one-time code can be requested via SMS. The main advantage of using this form of login is that it provides much better security than logging in with just a username and password. If you, as a Lantero customer, want to change the login method, please contact us at Lantero, and we will assist you! Lantero's approach is to constantly meet the security needs of our customers, where login is a crucial part. This means that methods and their implementations are continuously evolving. In addition to the existing options, we are open to dialogue with our customers, leading to new possibilities and adjustments—either for the solution as a whole or for individual customers' implementations. In the near future, the BankID implementation will be upgraded and modernized, and we will provide more details in a later blog post.

The Örebro District Court has convicted a technician involved in vehicle inspections for bribery. (Länk) The man is said to have accepted bribes to approve cars. The case follows a pattern where bribes often occur at the intersection of the private and public sectors. Vehicle inspections can be considered a delegated exercise of authority since it is an activity sanctioned by the public and funded with public resources. The problem is often linked to sparsely compensated officials representing significant values in their duties and, therefore, having incentives to capitalize on these values. It is somewhat less clear whether the official's compensation level has any substantial statistical significance when it comes to bribes. It is conceivable that control over values in the form of permits, licenses, or the like, exerts sufficient allure regardless of the official's current income level. Lantero frequently receives questions about what falls within the scope of whistleblower laws (The Whistleblower Act), and in such a case, it is certainly possible to interpret it as a whistleblowing case. Publicly sanctioned activities that control or regulate traffic safety are considered a matter of public interest, and bribery that risks undermining traffic safety or the legitimacy of regulatory authorities (and operations with delegated exercise of authority) must be regarded as serious. In the current case, however, it is unclear whether it has been brought to light through whistleblowing reporting and has bearing upon the Whistleblower Act.

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. This will protect the Union's openness and other fundamental values. The initiative seeks to deal with problems around conflicts of interest and the influence of the democratic processes. It also aims to 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.

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.

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.