Response to interpellation 2025/26:451 on further measures against companies used as tools for crime

Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Mr. Speaker! Ingela Nylund Watz has asked me what additional measures I and the government are prepared to take to make it impossible for companies to be used as criminal tools and thereby also limit the criminal economy.

The government's plan against organized crime is well-known and remains firm. It is about striking hard against gross violence, strangling the criminal economy, and breaking the gangs' ruthless recruitment of children and young people. The work is carried out in accordance with the national strategy against organized crime, which we presented at the beginning of 2024. One of the goals in the strategy is precisely to dismantle the criminal economy, among other things by preventing companies and other legal entities from being used as tools for crime.

The government has taken a long series of measures to prevent companies from being used as tools for crime. Let me mention some examples. In January 2025, new legislation was introduced with the aim of countering the use of companies as tools for crime. For example, Bolagsverket was given expanded possibilities to demand personal appearance in order to counter economic crime such as company hijackings and the use of money mules. This can occur during the registration of representatives or upon suspicion of incorrect information in the registers. The measures are part of expanding Bolagsverket's controls of the company registers and strengthening the agency's role in the work against crime in companies.

From and including January this year, the business prohibition due to crime has also been extended to include the person who has committed organized or systematic crime, regardless of whether the person conducted or had a connection to business activities at the time of the crime, if it is considered that a business prohibition is warranted from, as it is called, a general point of view.

The government has also appointed an inquiry to be reported in November 2026, which looks at further measures against companies being used to commit crimes. The inquiry's observations and conclusions will, of course, constitute an important basis for the government's continued work to push back organized crime. I can also mention that since the end of 2024, there has been new legislation on forfeiture which has created a clearer and more effective regulatory framework for seizing criminal profits and unexplained assets from criminals, not infrequently in a corporate context.

The Government has also, over several years, tasked the Swedish Tax Agency, the Swedish Customs Service, and the Swedish Enforcement Authority with stopping, to a greater extent, the use of companies as criminal tools within organized crime. Since May 2025, a number of agencies have also been tasked with a concerted effort against organized crime in the welfare sector. The Health and Social Services Inspectorate has – finally, one might say – received sharper tools to be able to act against criminal and unscrupulous actors operating in the welfare sector. The Government has also strengthened the Swedish Companies Registration Office's financial conditions to strengthen the crime prevention work, and the agency shall report back on how the new tools have functioned.

In April 2025, the financial intelligence center was established at the Swedish Police Authority, where authorities and banks cooperate to effectively exchange operational information and work together to prevent crime against financial crime such as money laundering and fraud. The center shall be fully established by December 31, 2027, at the latest.

At the end of 2025, Brå presented a government assignment on how companies are used as criminal tools by actors in the criminal environment. The study provides proposals on how crime can be countered and how the work against this issue can be developed. The study supports measures aimed at excluding persons in the criminal environment from the business sector, for example through extended business prohibitions. Brå assesses, among other things, that it is also important to limit the use of "målvakter" (gatekeepers). Together with, among others, ESO's report on the extent of the criminal economy – a current and frightening read – this constitutes significant underlying material for the government's continued work to choke the criminal economy.

The work to dismantle the criminal economy is, in other words, proceeding with full force. The legislation has become more effective, and new tools have been put in place. The level of knowledge is increasing, both regarding the extent of the criminal economy and how to prevent and seize criminal proceeds. The authorities are developing new forms of cooperation, and we will continue to make progress in accordance with these lines, all with the aim of making it even harder to be a criminal in Sweden and to safeguard the citizens' safety and security.

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Ingela Nylund Watz (S)

Mr. Speaker! Thank you for the answer, Minister for Justice! In long paragraphs, there were many good things there that I also know we have agreed on here in the chamber. I would like to have said that.

But I shall begin at this end: Black figures – that is the name of the quite recently published report from the Expert Group on Public Economics, ESO, which the Minister himself mentioned here. In the report, the criminal economy in Sweden is assessed to turn over 352 billion kronor per year. This corresponds to 5.5 percent of Sweden's GDP. This is an account of facts that is significantly more extensive than previous assessments. The one made just a few years ago by the Economic Crime Authority pointed to a turnover of 150 billion.

It is now common for criminal actors within organized crime to use companies as tools. Before the turn of the year, Brå presented a study on how these companies illegally access public funds. Brå assesses that the criminal companies have 11.5 billion kronor in defaulted debts to the state. At the same time, they have actually received billions in state support, and that is, of course, completely unacceptable.

According to this report, one in five cybercriminals, or persons with links to them, has been involved in at least one company during the period 2020–2023. In total, this concerns 23,000 companies, and they are present in many industries. The Minister of Justice is certainly well aware of them. In some of these industries and activities, a permit is actually required to conduct the business, which is particularly noteworthy.

Mr. Speaker! Companies are attractive tools for crime. They provide legitimacy, and one gets the opportunity to act in many arenas and hide other crimes. Illegal activity is mixed with legal activity. Criminal actors often acquire a serious legal facade but do completely different things beneath the surface. They outcompete decent companies through, among other things, VAT fraud, labor crime, credit fraud, money laundering, smuggling, and investment fraud. And Brå assesses, as stated, that these companies have 11.5 billion kronor in defaulted debts to the state.

Mr. Speaker! The government often returns to the point that crime fighting is a priority task and has continued the work that the previous government began. It is good, as I said. But the government has unfortunately not been sufficiently active when it comes to combating economic crime, and within that framework, companies fall as tools of crime.

Mr. Speaker! On January 25, Anders Björkenheim, who is a specialist in the area of companies as tools for crime, published an opinion piece in Svenska Dagbladet with the headline "Paying tax has become optional," where he writes that it is now "up to your own ethics and morals." In the article, he puts forward the view that we are losing the fight against corporatized crime because there is a reluctance to take a holistic approach.

If it is unwillingness, inability, or something else that prevents the government from taking a more active stance towards this major, system-threatening social problem, I will leave that unsaid for the time being. But I would like to have an answer here and now to the question of what additional measures the government is prepared to take and whether the Minister for Justice considers that it should be voluntary to pay tax in Sweden.

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Eva Lindh (S)

Mr. Speaker! Many thanks to the Minister for Justice – and of course to my party colleague, who has requested this debate, for it is an important issue.

We often talk about organized crime and how it manifests in the explosions and shootings that plague our country. It is important that we talk about it, and it is important that we take action on it. That is something we completely agree on.

What we perhaps do not always talk about as much is that behind the weapons, there is the money. If the money is not there, it becomes less possible to buy those weapons. And behind the money, to an ever increasing extent, there are companies – companies that are created in order to be able to commit economic crime and criminal activities.

The sad thing is that while criminals are increasingly using companies as criminal tools and furthermore use the money to commit sacrilegious acts against us all and against society, serious entrepreneurs continue to pay tax. They follow rules and take responsibility for their employees. They are then competed out by actors who cheat with VAT, exploit labor, launder money and use threats and violence as a business model. This is therefore not just a crime problem. It is an industrial policy problem, and it is a welfare problem. It diverts money from what we want, can, and should finance collectively.

The Minister of Justice has stated very clearly which measures the government has taken. The Minister of Justice's message is that much has been done to act against economic crime. But in summary, just as my colleague Ingela Nylund Watz read out and said in her speech, that is not what studies show. We have not tackled economic crime.

I want to bring up a report that the OECD has presented regarding Sweden. The main message is essentially this: Sweden has good ambitions and strong institutions but is weak on actual prosecution and corporate responsibility when it comes to economic crime and corruption. Sweden's ability to investigate and prosecute international corruption and corporate-related economic crime causes serious concern.

To translate this into ordinary Swedish: Sweden is really bad at combating economic crime – actually the worst in its class among the countries that the OECD has looked at.

This means that we have much more that needs to be done because economic crime is bad because it diverts resources from our society and the common good. It undermines the opportunities for serious companies to compete on equal terms. And the money that is obtained from this is used for explosions, shootings, and other criminal activities. It undermines the trust in our society.

The question from my colleague Ingela Nylund Watz is therefore very reasonable. What does the government need, must, and plan to do more?

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Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Mr. Speaker! Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the important issue of the criminal economy here today!

I used the first six minutes here in the chamber to list all the measures we have taken, all the measures we are in the middle of, and also those that are in the pipeline. Then I hear two contributions from Social Democrats saying that it is too little and want to hear more. But it was actually two contributions without a single own, concrete proposal on what we should do more. I would gladly listen to that, but I have not heard anything so far.

I think there is a great deal that speaks for the fact that Sweden needs to do much more, but when that point of view comes precisely from S, it does not feel particularly credible because too little and too late, so to speak, was the basic agreement during eight years of Social Democratic rule.

I will take just one example regarding permit-required activities, because we have spoken a lot about what happens within healthcare and elderly care. When my colleague Camilla Waltersson Grönvall joined the Ministry of Social Affairs, there was a list from Ivo with 40 points that they had requested from the previous government. It was about more efficient tools and new legislation.

Ivo is to move from being an authority that monitors the quality of coronary artery operations to combating organized crime. Only one of the 40 points was underway during the first eight years with the Socialdemokraterna. Now we have at least ticked off a good portion over 20. That means we are on the right track, but we are really not there yet, and unfortunately we do not have much to learn from the Socialdemokraterna – unless you now surprise me in the next round and come up with a dozen suggestions on what else we need to do.

More must really be done, because we know that other economic crime has surpassed drugs as the main source of income for the gangs in the criminal economy. We also know that the 100–150 billion that is spoken of was a gross estimate.

When I stepped on board this assignment, I met with the Economic Crime Authority, the Swedish Prosecution Authority, and the Swedish Police Authority. They said that there is a skyrocketing criminal economy and that they perceive it to be about 100–150 billion, but that they do not know for sure. Since then, different actors, not least in the latest ESO study, have given us a more precise perception of the economy's scope when it comes to both turnover and profits. The insight that it turns over over 300 billion is a terrible reading.

This justifies much more, and we are now also doing much more. We are making targeted efforts against the frauds. We are also making broader targeted efforts, as I mentioned, through the financial intelligence center that is now being built up. It came from the experience that we could halve the profits from the telephone frauds through close cooperation between banks on one side and the police and other law enforcement agencies on the other. That experience goes straight into a center where we are now building up an operation that shall target all economic crime and not just those – which are in themselves very important – telephone frauds that largely affect the elderly.

In line with that experience and in line with the new legislation on forfeiture, we have just tasked authorities to also establish a national center concerning the forfeiture of criminal proceeds. There is an insight that we will not be able to prosecute our way out of the criminal economy but must tackle it on other fronts – not least by going straight for the money.

This is what we are doing now with new tools such as independent forfeiture, but we must achieve a completely different systemic power in it. We achieve that by now commissioning the Swedish Police Authority, the Swedish Economic Crime Authority, the Swedish Prosecution Authority, and the Swedish Enforcement Authority to establish a corresponding center to also access the proceeds of crime.

I can mention another area on the same theme – that is, that we cannot prosecute our way out of this problem – which I think is worth highlighting. It concerns the great potential that lies in so-called administrative measures, i.e., getting all other authorities to now mobilize – the Swedish Tax Agency, the Work Environment Authority and other authorities – and attack the criminal economy with their administrative tools. We know from experience from other countries that this is absolutely crucial if one is to succeed with this task.

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Ingela Nylund Watz (S)

Mr. Speaker! I thank you for the continued discussion on the matter. The Minister for Justice can be completely at ease. Before we leave the chamber today, he will receive a long enumeration of proposals that we have in this area. However, it will not be in this contribution.

I want to go back to the ESO report, because according to it, it is exactly as the Minister for Justice himself just said: The black economy and black jobs have the absolutely largest turnover of these 352 billion. Approximately 64 percent of the criminal economy is black jobs and other black sales.

The National Police Commissioner was interviewed in Svenska Dagbladet in January this year, and she argued that more agencies than the police now need to act and must do more to take a new grip on organized crime. In my opinion, the government is in this case one of the most important other agencies.

There is perhaps a dividing line between us and the right-wing politicians, because I mean that the government has been far too complacent when it comes to black market work, tax evasion, VAT fraud, price-dumped procurement, unprofessional competition, and work-life crime. In fact, this part of economic crime has been somewhat of a blind spot for the government. Just as my colleague Eva Lindh mentioned, it is de facto the case that very few are prosecuted for economic crime in Sweden. It is approximately 15 percent.

Do not deliberately misinterpret me now, because I stand behind several of the proposals that the government has put forward, and we have jointly agreed on these and in the chamber voted through what the government has proposed to counter organized crime. However, there is something missing, and that is exactly what the ESO report with all its desirable clarity shows.

The serious companies in Sweden are genuinely concerned, and a year ago the Minister for Justice and I debated this. Unfortunately, the situation has worsened. The World Economic Forum compiles the Global Risks Report every year together with the insurance company Zurich, and according to the Global Risks Report for 2024, Sweden is one of the very few countries in the OECD where business leaders rank the risk of crime and illegal activity as the primary fear for their operations. In most other countries, this risk has decreased.

The Global Risks Report indicates that this crime risks the functioning of the market, the tax base, and the state's ability to deliver basic services. It is therefore about precisely that systemic threat that both the Minister for Justice and we Social Democrats so often speak about.

I do not distrust the Minister of Justice's will to tackle crime, but this will probably require that certain moderate ideological blinkers regarding the view on companies and entrepreneurship be removed. Moderate politicians – right-wing politicians – must also dare to see reality as it is: Not all entrepreneurship is for the better. Wage dumping, the gig economy, undeclared work, work-life crime, and tax evasion are business models that must be removed from the market. The government must act resolutely.

We Social Democrats have several proposals in this area, and I will return to these shortly in my final contribution. Several of the proposals aim to rectify the rules of the game in the business sector. We cannot allow unserious companies to systematically exploit workers' conditions as a means of competition and use the corporate form as a tool for crime.

Do we share that description of reality?

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Eva Lindh (S)

Mr. Speaker and the Minister for Justice! It is not that we think all 20 points are wrong, but it is about whether we have done enough to stop economic crime in Sweden. The answer to that question is no. Several reports show this, so we need to do more.

Just as I have said, this threatens our society and our trust. It also naturally risks fueling the crime we have in Sweden, because without money, it is not so easy to carry out the crime we see right now and which plagues our country.

What else do we need to do? It is, of course, perfectly fine for the Minister of Justice to ask us questions, and as Ingela Nylund Watz has previously said, she will read out some of our proposals. What is the role of an opposition is to ask questions to the responsible minister, and after the autumn election, perhaps the Moderaterna will have the opportunity to do the same thing we are doing now – and be held to account. Welcome to that role!

Now OECD shows that we are the worst in the class. The model we have now therefore does not work. I may be sarcastic, but what we need to empty the bucket of water is, besides these ten small toy shovels, also larger shovels – that is, other, more efficient tools to stop economic crime. More needs to be done.

The questions we have asked today are whether the Minister for Justice shares the assessment we make, namely that the tools needed to stop economic crime do not exist, and what the Minister intends to do in that case. What tools can he imagine developing?

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Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Mr. Speaker! I thank the members for the opportunity to discuss those issues further.

My simple point was that it is clear that we are not there yet. It is clear that we have an enormous problem with the criminal economy. But what we have received is a precise understanding of the criminal economy, which, so to speak, was not in the desk drawer when we entered the Ministry of Justice. Instead, we inherited vague notions that it could involve a turnover of 100–150 billion.

We also inherited that list I mentioned – Ivo's list with 40 points. Only one of these 40 points was in progress from the previous government. Had we known about this, we would have opposed that list even more strongly before the election. It is, so to speak, a manifesto of a completely unique paralysis of action, which possibly makes it a bit less credible when the Social Democrats now come with their classic "Too little is being done, and it is being done too late."

I have also read these indices and taken part of the various reports. If we go into depth, we see that this is not exactly something that has emerged in the last year, but rather that one takes hold of a development over a decade in Sweden. This applies in particular to the lethal gun violence, which after all is what has truly put Sweden in a completely unique international position when it comes to organized crime. We can read these reports and see that it is pointed out that the lethal gun violence in Sweden tripled over ten years.

That we have now halved the lethal gun violence is, naturally, a completely decisive step in also moving forward and tackling everything else that drives the violence, and there the criminal economy is completely decisive. We are in complete agreement – it was indeed I who said it, but I perceived it as being confirmed – that narcotics are naturally a very significant part, but that other economic crime has overtaken narcotics as the main source of income. This means that we must also direct the full force of the democratic rule of law towards the criminal economy.

What I reported was thus partly what we have done, partly what is in progress, and partly what lies ahead of us. I intend to repeat myself regarding obtaining real systemic power and as much output as possible. I mentioned the Commissioner of the Swedish Police, who surely thinks that the government should do more – and the government must do so. But that was primarily an expression of the insight that the entirety of Agency Sweden, the entirety of Municipal Sweden, and the entirety of Regional Sweden must pull in the same direction and move the positions forward if one is to achieve systemic power against the criminal economy.

If I am to mention something that we have not yet spoken about, I want to bring up the insight into how we achieve the information sharing that we are now finally getting to do. After 50 years of debate, we are now tearing down the secrecy barriers so that it is possible to share information between our agencies.

In the next step, we must achieve a completely different exchange of information between state actors and the private business sector. If they are to be able to cooperate against the criminal economy, we must establish information flows, and it is truly a completely new step that requires major reforms during the next parliamentary term. I hope that they will be implemented with broad support here in the chamber. I believe that is an incredibly important matter.

Another thing is to now achieve full power in the broad structures that we are building up in the form of a financial intelligence center and the national center for forfeiture. It is also about developing our akrim centers. If there is an area that I think has received too little attention both during this mandate period and previously, it is organized crime in the workplace.

We have recently seen police raids, not least at Stegra in Boden, which so to speak deeply confirm the problems we have with labor-related crime in this country. There is much more to be done there to gain strength. The Akrimcenter was a good initiative, but it is actually only an embryo of the structures we must build to be able to seriously tackle that part of the criminal economy.

All in all: If we look at organized crime in general, which is what is reflected in the rankings, indices, and reports referred to, we see that there is no doubt that halving the violence is an incredibly central piece for changing that picture as well. When it comes to the criminal economy and other parts of organized crime, we must do much more, and I have accounted for a good deal of what is underway.

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Ingela Nylund Watz (S)

Mr. Speaker and the Minister for Justice! A Swedish mafia law, increased penalties for particularly serious economic crime, reinforced supervision and increased sanction fees to counter crime in the working life, a limitation of the number of sub-supplier links in public procurement to two, blacklisting of companies that cheat, the possibility to exclude unreasonably low bids, a greater state responsibility for payroll systems and personnel identification in risk industries, a clear crime-prevention mandate for the Swedish Payments Agency, an expansion of the audit obligation, a stop to the cheating with subsidized employment and a radically expanded possibility to issue business prohibitions.

These are some of the proposals that we have put forward during this parliamentary term and which the government has rejected. We think that is unfortunate. I believe, however, that it is because there is a difference in what we Social Democrats perceive when we look at reality and what the government chooses to look at when it comes to seeing economic crime in plain sight.

We have long seen that the workforce in Sweden is unfortunately, in many cases, exploited for the purpose of creating profit in companies, evading taxes, or fiddling with the VAT. The employees unfortunately often end up being the crash cushion in this context. If one does not have the insight that not all business is for the better and that not all business owners are honest in their intentions – if one instead has a slightly light-blue view of business owners and business in Sweden – I mean that one perhaps also chooses not to see the reality that many employees in the vulnerable industries see.

Therefore, we perhaps have slightly different approaches.

(Applause)

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Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Madam Speaker! I thank Ingela Nylund Watz with adjutant for the opportunity to discuss these issues here today.

Well, I think perhaps the description of how the Moderaterna view entrepreneurship was a bit of a 70s flashback. There is certainly no doubt whatsoever that we are very driven when it comes to combating the criminal economy. This is especially true because we know that all serious entrepreneurs face unhealthy competition every day in the form of criminal actors, which undermines the conditions for a well-functioning market economy, for free entrepreneurship, and for personal ownership.

There is, therefore, no doubt whatsoever that we are very committed to that task. I also want to emphasize that we really are not there yet. A great deal of work remains; already the turnover figure of 300 billion underscores, so to speak, that we are only at the beginning of rolling back something that has grown over a very long time.

I took up the list of 40 points from Ivo because I do not find the Social Democrats' tuft of feathers particularly credible in these issues. If we had taken over a 40-point list where 39 points had been checked off, one would have had a fairly strong claim, but we took over a list where one of 40 points had been checked off.

Regarding the proposals that Ingela Nylund Watz raised, it was good that they came here at the end, because I have really requested them. I also want to say that several of the proposals are good. The reason why they are sometimes voted down in the committee proceedings here in the Riksdag is that we see that they are already underway. There are slightly different opinions on exactly what the mafia law should contain, but fundamentally, every point is already underway. When it comes to blacklisting in public procurement, it is underway, and the reinforced supervision is underway. The reinforced business ban is underway or largely already completed.

I therefore welcome this and will analyze every point to see if there is as much as 20 percent of each point that we have not done. In that case, we shall do that as well. I believe, after all, that we can get the system's power against the criminal economy if we describe each other's starting points a bit more fairly and listen to each other's proposals a bit more attentively.

(Applause)

The interpellations debate was hereby concluded.

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